You may have read this headline in any of the past three decades. Well, it holds true now more than ever.
Baby Boomers are now aged 50-65. They used drugs as teenagers and have problem leaving their addiction behind. Believe me, the added medical costs from Baby Boomer drug use and abuse could cripple our country. As reported in abcnews.go.com.
It turns out that those who came of age in the marijuana-happy, acid-dropping, cocaine-snorting 1960s and '70s are finding their way back to drugs.
Here a frightening statistic, in 2010, nearly 2.4 million people ages 50 to 59 said they had abused prescription or illegal drugs within the past month; more than double that of 2002.
When you think of a 55-year-old being rushed to the emergency room you think car accident or heart attack. Emergency rooms nationwide are seeing more patients age 55 and older for reactions to cocaine, heroin and especially marijuana.
Visits to the emergency room for marijuana abuse, for example, jumped 200% from 2004 to 2009 in this age group.
In addition to drugs like marijuana, cocaine and even heroin, Baby Boomers apt to be abusing pain killers and anti-anxiety drugs, heading to the streets to buy Didlaudid, Ativan, Xanax and Roxicet illegally.
In one of my 12 hour drug and alcohol awareness classes I had a 55-year-old soccer mom who was buying Ativan directly from one of her daughters friends!
Perhaps we need to mandate drug classes for everyone when they hit 50. While that may seem overkill, it deserves some thought. One thing Baby Boomers don’t have that teens do is the belief that they are invincible.
