I’m headed to the beach with friends next week for an end-of-the-summer blow-out. And it’s a safe bet that while I’m there that someone at some point will produce a joint. I myself won’t partake—my daughter will be nearby, and one of my current job applications might require a drug test.

 Yet the point is, I won’t be judging my friends, either. What was that lyric Paul Simon wrote? But I would not be convicted by a jury of my peers.

As it turns out, some of my peers still partake. And unlike Bill Clinton, we can confess to past drug use with clear consciences.

 Because drugs just happened to be part of our youth, part of our boomer culture—kind of like martinis in Mad Men.

Turns out, too, that the boomer party is still in full swing. For proof, check out “An Examination of Trends in Illicit Drug Use among Adults Aged 50 to 59,” a study just released by the government’s Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMSHA.)

According to SAMSHA’s analysis,
“Many baby boomers…are continuing to use illicit drugs as they grow older, causing the rate of illicit drug use to go up within the 50- to 59-year-old-age segment of the population.” To arrive at their findings, government researchers looked at the lives of 51,474 respondents born between 1943 and 1962.

They found some particularly interesting data about the 16,656 members of the cohort aged 50 to 59.

Specifically they found that the use of drugs by people in this age segment nearly doubled from 2002 to 2007: from 5.1 percent to 9.4 percent (according to federal surveys).

Using this rate of growth, the analysts projected that what they called “substance abuse disorder” would grow from 2.8 million in the years 2002 to 2006, during the span of the surveys, to 5.7 million by 2020.

“These findings show that many in the Woodstock generation continue to use illicit drugs as they age,” SAMHSA Acting Administrator Eric Broderick said in a press release.

Broderick wasn’t amused. “This continued use poses medical risks to these individuals and is likely to put further strains on the nation’s health care,” he said, “highlighting the value of preventing drug use from ever starting.”  level of education, unemployment due to disability, use of alcohol and tobacco, existence of a “depressive episode,” and rare religious attendance.


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The problem with drug use among boomers, the report
emphasized, was that, in terms of our physical health, drugs are no longer a
matter of let’s-smoke-this-stuff-then-go-find-some-munchies. Because of our aging
bodies’ decreased metabolism and reduced body water, we are increasingly sensitive
to drugs’ effects, and thus more in danger of unwanted effects on our cognitive
and motor abilities, and of susceptibility to falls.

“Drug use” for this study meant marijuana, cocaine, heroin,
hallucinogens, inhalants, and non-medical uses of pain relievers,
sedatives, tranquilizers, and stimulants. (I have some problems with
lumping pot in with these seemingly more dangerous drugs, but more on
that later.)


Common characteristics of use included male gender, unmarried status,
early age of initiation, residence in the West, the problem with drug use among boomers, the report emphasized, was that, in terms of our physical health, drugs are no longer a matter of let’s-smoke-this-stuff-then-go-find-some-munchies.

Because of our aging bodies’ decreased metabolism and reduced body water, we are increasingly sensitive to drugs’ effects, and thus more in danger of unwanted effects on our cognitive and motor abilities, and of susceptibility to falls.

The good news, however, if there is any, is that a sort of “cohort replacement effect” can be blamed for the increase in the percentage of boomers using illicit drugs—rather than a straightforward rate of increase.

As the report explains: “Analyses show that the observed increases are driven primarily by the aging of the baby boom cohort, which has a much higher lifetime illicit drug use rate than earlier cohorts, representing an increased proportion of persons aged 50 to 59.”

In other words, boomers born from 1953 through 1957 had a higher rate of use when they reached 50 than did those born from 1948 through 1952.

In the broader population of people ages 50 to 59, only about 14.4 percent of persons who had ever used drugs still were using in the year before the federal survey; most boomers said they had discontinued use.


And that’s probably the best thing, given the intense effects these days of what we once considered innocent drugs. The homegrown, backyard pot circulated around campuses in the 1960s long ago gave way to expertly cultivated, THC-intensive weed.

Then, when you throw in the horror stories, like that of the Long Island mom who was high on who-knows-what driving the wrong way on the Taconic State Parkway, and of Michael Jackson being shot up with narcotics: Well, the age of innocence is over.

 Come to think of it, it probably ended 40 years ago, with the drug deaths of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin.

The upshot? Given our bodies’ increased sensitivity, we should all probably stop imbibing whatever we’re imbibing.

At the beach next week, I personally am going to pull out the Scrabble set and see if any of my boomers friends are “up” for that.