Aging in America takes a toll well before the body or the mind start to wither and slow. In fact, the perils of old age appear first in the wallet and the bank account.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Age discrimination in the American workforce is nothing new \u2014 companies\u2019 reluctance to hire workers over 40\u00a0was a problem Franklin Delano Roosevelt\u2019s labor secretary\u00a0noted in the 1940s<\/a>. But as wages stay flat and housing costs continue to rise, older workers today find themselves in a particularly precarious position.\u00a0<\/p>\n Companies\u00a0are happy to jettison<\/a>\u00a0their more experienced (and more expensive) employees for someone younger and cheaper, just as those older workers start to really,\u00a0really need the\u00a0medical benefits<\/a>\u00a0often available only through a job. The social toll this takes in a society\u00a0where half the country has\u00a0yet to fully recover<\/a>\u00a0from the Great Recession\u00a0is obvious: It is not an accident that\u00a0half of the country\u2019s homeless population is\u00a0over 50<\/a>.<\/p>\n A full solution to this serious problem would be to restore the country\u2019s social safety net. But in the short-term, it seems older people have to stay in the workforce.\u00a0And according to recent research<\/a>, one way to keep older Americans healthy and productive is to legalize\u00a0medical marijuana<\/a>.<\/p>\n Researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and from Temple University looked at 100,000 responses to survey questions given by Americans aged 51 and older over a 20-year period between 1992 and 2012. During that period of time, 20 states had some form of medical marijuana law, though access varied widely on a state-by-state basis.<\/p>\n Researchers paid close attention to survey responses that \u201chave a plausible link to one\u2019s ability to work: frequency of pain, whether health limits work, overall health assessment, and depressive symptoms.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n And in states where medical cannabis was legal, older adults who had a \u201chealth condition that would qualify for medical marijuana\u201d experienced a 4.8 percent decrease in reported pain, and a 6.6 percent increase in \u201cvery good or excellent health,\u201d according to the study, published in the most recent\u00a0Journal of Policy Analysis and Management.\u00a0<\/p>\n States with medical marijuana laws also experienced greater increases in full-time work compared to states without, according to the study, which was funded in part by the National Institute on Aging.<\/p>\n The study is significant not only for the good news it contains for older American workers, but as proof of medical marijuana\u2019s legitimacy and efficacy.\u00a0<\/p>\n It also delivers a significant blow, in the form of data, to\u00a0ridiculous, prohibitionist arguments<\/a>\u00a0that legalized cannabis somehow leads to decreases in productivity.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cOur study is important because of the limited availability of clinical trial data on the effects of medical marijuana,\u201d Lauren Hersch Nicholas, an assistant professor in the Bloomberg School\u2019s Department of Health Policy and Management, said in a press release provided by JHU. \u201cWhile several studies point to improved pain control with medical marijuana, research has largely ignored older adults even though they experience the highest rates of medical issues that could be treated with medical marijuana.\u201d<\/p>\n The study also provides a very obvious explanation for why cannabis is proving so popular among baby boomers. Cannabis is an effective sleep aid and is effective in treating\u00a0chronic pain<\/a>, two of the joys of aging and two significant barriers to keeping healthy long enough to be a productive worker.<\/p>\n It would be a fine and good thing to not require Americans to work from cradle to the grave (if for no other reason that 20 percent of the population will be 60 or older by 2050 per recent projections, a time when robots will be doing all of the work anyhow). But until then \u2014 and even in a rosy scenario where older people can enjoy \u201cretirement\u201d \u2014 cannabis appears to provide them with appreciable benefits.<\/p>\n TELL US<\/strong>, do you or a loved one use cannabis to augment your productivity?<\/p>\n The post Study Ties Medical Marijuana to Productivity in Aging Workers<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Aging in America takes a toll well before the body or the mind start to wither and slow. In fact, the perils of old age appear first in the wallet and the bank account.\u00a0 Age discrimination in the American workforce is nothing new \u2014 companies\u2019 reluctance to hire workers overContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1387,50,638,9525,53,139,1806,9526,9527],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33984"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33984"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33984\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33985,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33984\/revisions\/33985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Pain Relief and a Good Night\u2019s Sleep<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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\nRead More: Study Ties Medical Marijuana to Productivity in Aging Workers<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"