CALGARY—Standing on his front porch one morning, facing a vegetable garden filled with the last of the summer’s beans and tomatoes, Rick Beaver lights a joint.

He smoked his first in 1968, when he was 15 years old. Though he enjoyed weed for most of his life, Beaver took a hiatus for more than a decade. Only in 2012, after bouts with bladder and esophageal cancer — and the pain, nausea, and appetite issues that went along with treatments — did he return.

“I felt so frigging miserable — so horrible — that finally, I said, ‘Why am I straight right now? I want to see what cannabis will do for me.’”

Now, he’s close to 65, has a prescription, and uses about three grams’ worth a day. He said the cannabis has cut the number of prescriptions he’s needed in half and helps manage his pain. And now, with legalization around the corner, Beaver wants to reach out to a demographic of cannabis users that is demonstrating quite an appetite for the drug — seniors.

“It’s going to be chaos,” Beaver said of legalization. “And that’s why I think seniors need to be guided through this.”

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As much as cannabis is seen as a young person’s drug, seniors are flocking to medicinal cannabis clinics across Calgary. In his experience, Beaver estimated around half of their clientele are at least 55 years old — or older. Many are looking to reduce their dependence on medication — especially opioids — to deal with chronic pain or sleep issues.

“There seems to be a big surge of seniors turning to medical cannabis,” said Gord Hayes, vice-president of the Calgary Cannabis Club.

But Beaver pointed out that plenty of seniors were already using cannabis in one form or another long before legalization was ever floated by the federal government.

“Most of us, we’ve been hiding in plain sight for a very long time,” he said.

In fact, at least one Calgary-based clinic — Rocky Mountain Cannabis Club — was inundated with older clients when it first opened in December. Three seniors homes in the area shuttle their residents to the southeast strip mall where the clinic is located to go shopping, according to Brent Curtis, the clinic’s manager.

“(Our patients) ended up being 90 per cent baby boomers (and seniors),” he said. “So, we started to cater to them instead.”

Most of them use cannabis oils or sprays, although Curtis said there’s a trio of 90-year-old patients who use vaporizers, too. Despite stocking plenty of bongs and pipes, Curtis said he hasn’t sold a single one since the clinic opened.

But Beaver said there’s a lot of misconceptions many seniors — and non-cannabis users, in general — have regarding its effects.

One of them?

“They think they’re going to get really, really high,” Beaver said.

Breaking the stigma of decades of cannabis prohibition is incredibly tough, he said. The drug has been demonized by the Canadian government in the past, its medicinal properties aren’t fully understood, and the rapid pace of legalization can be difficult to follow.

Beaver already produces educational videos for the Calgary Cannabis Club and tries to talk to seniors one-on-one about cannabis. But he wants to take it a step further. Beaver joked about his hunger for learning: if he gets into a sailboat, he wants to know everything there is to know about sailing. And over the years, he has devoured books on the subject, attended conferences, and has spoken with experts.

“It’s incumbent on people such as myself and other people who’ve taken the time and have the necessary mental acuity to actually learn this stuff, to be able to speak about it with some expertise and authority,” Beaver said.

Medicinal cannabis clinics are also finding themselves educating their older patients on cannabis use and its effects. Curtis said he’s hosted information sessions at Rocky Mountain Cannabis Club.

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“We just spend a lot of time talking with seniors and helping them to make a decision,” Curtis said.

The next step — for Beaver and several other people — is to start running information sessions on cannabis at Calgary-area seniors homes. He still needs to figure out a curriculum, sift through all the research, and line up sessions, but said he feels it’s needed to bring older people up to speed.

“Here’s where the problem of dealing with seniors is: You’ve got to start very, very simple. And to start very, very simple, you have to reduce it down to basic components,” Beaver said. “Because it can be a long education process.”

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