Johanna Selhorst "Josie" Maran (born May 8, 1978) is an American supermodel and actress. She made some commercials for Maybelline, Neutrogena and other important cosmetic brands, she appeared in a music video of Backstreet Boys and also in movies like Van Helsing, The Aviator and The Gravedancers.
Apparently, you just can’t teach some aging baby boomers new habits! According to a new government study, more than 4 million adults over the age of 50 are smoking marijuana and abusing prescription drugs. The study shows that rates of abuse among the 50-plus age group almost doubled between 2002 and 2007 and suggests that over the next two decades the number of older adults using drugs will increase even further as the baby boomer generation ages—an increase that is expected to double the demand for treatment services by 2020. The report, based on data collected during 2006-08 from almost 20,000 U.S. adults born between 1946 and 1964, found that marijuana use was more prevalent among those aged 50 to 59, while prescription drug abuse was more common in those 65 and older. More men than women (8.5 percent vs. 3.9 percent) aged 50 to 54 acknowledged using marijuana in the previous year. Less than 1 percent of older adults said they had used drugs other than marijuana or prescription medications, including 0.5 percent for cocaine, 0.1 percent for hallucinogens and 0.1 percent for heroin. “This new data has profound implications for the health and well being of older adults who continue to abuse substances,” said Pamela Hyde, head of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the agency that conducted the study.
Peter Delany, director of the Office of Applied Studies at the SAMHSA, said the problem is that some baby boomers who picked up the drug habit when they were young never stopped as they matured into adulthood. “This is becoming more and more apparent in practice,” said Dr. Ihsan M. Salloum, chief of the Division of Alcohol and Drug Abuse: Treatment and Research at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. “You have both prescription drugs being used that people can become addicted to and also people who have had a pattern of use from before.”
Many health experts wonder how an already strained and under-prepared system will be able to treat all the aging drug users. “We need much better support services for the number of older adults who are going to have substance abuse problems,” said Dr. Gary Kennedy, director of Geriatric Psychiatry at Montefiore Medical Center. Kennedy says there’s a pattern of older adults transitioning from illicit drug use into prescription drug and alcohol abuse. “It could be an adult who used to smoke a joint every night before bed and now they take a sleeping pill,” he said, adding that alcohol is “still the king of abused substances.”
