At dispensaries across Manhattan's Upper West Side, budtenders say some of their most frequent customers are in their 70s, 80s, and even 90s — and they are not there for pain relief. One man in his 90s regularly buys about 10 of the strongest vapes available in a single visit, according to a budtender who works the counter. It is a snapshot of a broader shift: New York City seniors are using marijuana at record levels, and a new study says most of them are doing it simply to get high.
According to a New York Post report on the findings, roughly 60% of New York City residents aged 65 and older who use cannabis do so purely for recreational reasons rather than medical ones, per an NYU Langone study. The research, conducted by NYU Langone through a survey of 315 older adults in New York City, also found that 11% of NYC seniors had used cannabis within the past 24 hours, according to the study's researchers. Dr. Joseph Palamar co-authored the NYU Langone cannabis-use report, which the Post cites as the basis for much of its reporting.
The numbers reflect a national trend that has been building for years. NYU researchers found that cannabis use among older Americans increased nearly 46% between 2021 and 2023, a jump corroborated by a separate June 2025 study from New York University published in JAMA Internal Medicine. That research found past-month cannabis use among adults 65 and older reached 7% in 2023, with the sharpest growth among affluent seniors earning over $75,000 a year, college graduates, women, and married individuals. The trajectory is stark: Americans 65 and older reported marijuana use in the past year at just 0.4% in 2007, a figure that climbed to about 8% by 2022, per the same body of research.
Woodstock Generation Returns to the Dispensary Counter
Budtenders on the ground describe a clientele shaped by history as much as by health trends. Skye, who works at Flower Power Dispensers on Manhattan's Upper West Side, said many older customers reported attending the Woodstock music festival decades ago, according to the Post's reporting. People who grew up in the late 1960s helped popularize marijuana in the first place, and that generation is now returning to it in retirement — a pattern that lines up with federal survey data showing about 93% of cannabis users aged 50 to 64 first tried the drug before age 21, according to a 2018 study in Drug and Alcohol Dependence. Many baby boomers appear to have paused use during careers and child-rearing before picking it back up as legal barriers fell away.
That homecoming is happening in a legal landscape unrecognizable from the one boomers left behind. New York State legalized adult-use recreational marijuana in March 2021 under the Marihuana Regulation and Taxation Act, allowing adults 21 and older to possess up to three ounces of flower, according to the New York State Office of Cannabis Management. Legal retail sales launched in the state in December 2022, and the regulated market has since grown to 556 operational licensed dispensaries generating more than $2.5 billion in cumulative retail sales, per the same state agency.
Older Buyers Want Maximum Potency, Not Mild Highs
Dispensary staff say older clientele are not interested in the mellow flower their generation remembers. Older customers want the strongest THC and highest potency available, budtenders told the Post, and elderly clients frequently request specific high-potency strains like Acapulco Gold and Sour Diesel. Stephanie Staten, who works at The Flowery on the Upper West Side, is among the pot purveyors who say older NYC customers specifically request especially potent cannabis strains. Part of the appeal, according to budtenders, is that older marijuana users can develop a higher tolerance after decades of smoking, pushing them toward stronger products than younger, more casual users typically choose — who tend to prefer vaping and edibles in lighter formulations.
What today's senior buyers may not fully grasp is how much the chemistry has changed since their Woodstock-era days. Cannabis available illicitly in the 1960s and 1970s typically contained less than 2% to 3% THC, while modern legal dispensary flower routinely reaches 20% to 30% THC and concentrated vape oils can exceed 90% THC, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. That potency gap has real consequences: a January 2023 UC San Diego study published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society documented an 1,804% relative increase in cannabis-related emergency department visits among California adults 65 and older between 2005 and 2019, rising from 366 visits to more than 12,000 annually.
Health Risks Follow Seniors Back to the Habit
Medical researchers at NYU Langone Health warned in November 2025 that older adults face heightened risks of severe anxiety, cardiovascular strain, disorientation, fall injuries, and cannabis-induced psychosis — hazards that are especially pronounced with oral edibles, which have delayed onset and unpredictable dosing. The overall decline in cannabis stigma has touched every age group, including older people, easing the cultural resistance that once kept many boomers from returning to the drug even after legalization.
The overlap between recreational use and chronic illness adds another layer of concern for clinicians. Multi-year research from NYU and UC San Diego geriatric researchers found that cannabis use among older adults with multiple chronic conditions — including heart disease, diabetes, and hypertension — doubled between 2015 and 2023, with more than 20% reporting that a physician had recommended or discussed trying cannabis with them. Notably, NYC seniors now report using marijuana more often than cigarettes within the past year, according to the NYU Langone survey findings, a reversal that underscores just how normalized the drug has become among the city's older residents.
