VERY LONG-TERM USERS OF MARIJUANA IN THE UNITED-STATES - A PILOT-STUDY

The authors recruited a sample of 37 Americans, aged 30-74, who had sm oked marijuana on at least 5,000 separate occasions. These subjects we re found to span a wide range of ethnic groups, educational background s, occupations, and annual income; they did not display any obvious fe atures which distinguished them from the population as a whole. They t ypically began smoking in the 1960s or early 1970s, and then continued to smoke heavily into middle adulthood because they felt that marijua na relieved unpleasant feeling states such as anxiety or depression. T o our knowledge, individuals of this type have not previously been exa mined; further studies of older, long-term American marijuana users ar e needed.