Like most baby boomers who grew up in California and nearly half of the U.S. population, I tried marijuana as a teenager. The few times my girlfriends and I managed to get our hands on a joint, we would light it, pass it around and then spend several harmless hours giggling and acting silly. But once we matured, like most other adults I knew, we moved on to the far more legal and acceptable form of getting high—alcohol. And although some opportunities to give pot another try presented itself in the four decades since then, public aversion to smoking, the illegality, and the stigma, made it preferable to avoid. Now, in 2016 things are changing—dramatically. Not only is California poised to make recreational pot legal this November, our aging population is discovering the numerous medicinal benefits it offers to many who want to age as well as possible. Maybe it’s time for another look. [Read more…]