Seniors Are Retiring to Legal Marijuana States

Senior citizens are looking towards legal marijuana states when it comes time to consider a place to retire, according to a recent article in “Time Money.” The report suggests there is “anecdotal” evidence that many people over 60 suffering from conditions treatable with medical marijuana are migrating to states like Colorado and Oregon in an effort to have the access to natural medicine.

Although there is little documented proof that legal cannabis is a major factor for seniors when contemplating retirement locations, Michael Stoll, professor of public policy at the University of California in Los Angeles, says the latest moving data provides us with a relatively clear perspective.

In 2014, Oregon was ranked the leading destination in the United States, according to statistics provided by United Van Lines. One of the reasons, according to Stoll, is that people nearing retirement age set their sights on the Beaver State because projections indicated that the state would soon fully legalize cannabis. Of course, this is exactly what happened in November of 2014, when voters passed an initiative to establish a taxed and regulated cannabis industry.

What’s more, Stoll explains, is that states in the western part of the U.S., including Colorado, are all showing a large number of retirees moving into the area. In fact, one-third of all the movers surveyed by United specified that they were relocating for the sole purpose of retirement.

Therefore, it does not appear to be much of a stretch to consider that retirees, most of whom experienced their coming of age during the 1960s and 1970s, are gravitating towards legal territories in order to live out the rest of their days free from the constraints of prohibition.

And let’s face it – older folks often develop a lot of the same symptoms of aging – all of which respond well to cannabis treatment.

“A lot of the things marijuana is best at are conditions which become more of an issue as you get older,” Taylor West, deputy director of the Denver-based National Cannabis Industry Association, told Reuters. “Chronic pain, inflammation, insomnia, loss of appetite: All of those things are widespread among seniors.”

According to the article, many dispensaries report seeing more customers from the older generations than any other demographic – about 50 percent being seniors.

Would you move to a legal cannabis state to retire? Tell us in the comments.