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Smoking weed is often seen as an indulgence reserved for the young and the reckless: kids get high, in the popular imagination, but by and large their parents don’t.

But new federal data show a stunning reversal of that age-old stereotype. Middle-aged Americans are now slightly more likely to use marijuana than their teenage children.

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The research, released this week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, found that only 7.4 per cent of Americans aged 12 to 17 years old smoked marijuana regularly in 2014, a 10 per cent decline since 2002. But 8 per cent of 35 to 44 year olds used marijuana regularly in 2014, surpassing use among teens for the first time since at least 2002. (Survey data prior to that year aren’t directly comparable, as the methodology changed.)

And it’s not just middle-aged folks who are indulging more often. Since 2002, regular marijuana use among Americans age 45 to 54 has jumped by nearly 50 per cent. Among those ages 55 to 64, it’s jumped by a whopping 455 per cent (no, that’s not a typo).