Staff at Canna Remedies in Ewing, New Jersey welcome customers on the dispensary floor. An estimated one in five older adults say they’ve used cannabis in the past year, a number that has been steadily climbing in recent years as more and more U.S. states legalize the plant’s use.
But after decades of criminalization, many older adults still have questions about cannabis as a medicine, and whether it can fit into their current health regimens.
Dr. Monica Werkheiser, Pharm D, Head of Operations at Canna Remedies, is one of many medical professionals around the country working to tackle these questions head on, both by offering educational programming and by meeting older adults where they’re at, literally and figuratively.
For Dr. Werkheiser and her team, that’s meant hosting information sessions at community centers and assisted living facilities or other convenient locations, and giving attendees a brief breakdown of cannabis medicine in a familiar context, as well as plenty of time for questions.
“At first I used to go in and just do a presentation, and people would listen, but they kind of phase out at a certain point. There’s only so much information you can take in. Then I tried the opposite, just saying, ‘Who has questions? I’m here.’ Two hours later, I was still answering questions, and realized we had to find a marriage of both.”
“What we’ve found most successful is taking maybe about 15 to 20 minutes to just give a basics of cannabis and then help them relate it back to things they’re familiar with: you know your heart medicine, and it works in your cardiovascular system. You know that you have neurological medicines, like gabapentin and Lyrica, and those work in your central nervous system. So, now we have cannabis, which works in the system called endocannabinoid, and when you can start to relate it to things that they’re familiar with, it becomes an easier conversation.”
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