Follow section front redirects in Spectrum

Enable NLP source in PCS for load testing

Switch off the News Alerts Survey Widget when we have enough responses

Poll to determine if new LUF updates are available

Allows the winning A/B test variant to be turned on without Spectrum deployment

Show infinite scrolling sections in Assembler MultiView

Show option for NLP article summaries in Action Bar

A general feature flag for Recipe Features that aren't yet released

Feature flag for media team features that aren't yet released

Use new Orca video player for preroll plugin in Spectrum

Show the snow tracker (instead of the heat tracker) on Spectrum

Attorney general moves to reclassify marijuana as lower-risk drug

Poll shows how RFK Jr.’s appeal to anti-vaccine right could hurt Trump

Views of the campus protests are too broad — and too narrow

Miss Manners: Some audience members ask rambling questions post-lecture

Carolyn Hax: Her family left all the kitchen work to her, so she went on strike

Ask Amy: Why did my friend lie about seeing my ex-girlfriend?

Trump and allies say Biden pays rent for ‘illegals’ in Michigan. Not true.

Eighty percent of Ukraine-Israel bill will be spent in U.S. or by U.S. military

Facts in the Trump courtroom v. ‘facts’ in the court of public opinion

Southwest passengers now get a $75 voucher for big flight disruptions

The Rick Steves guide to life

The sad, stale state of in-flight vegetarian meals

I learned to heal my sadness by cradling dying chickens 

Brave Little Hunter is free: Baby orca escapes lagoon for open seas

Soldiers reunite with their pets from overseas: ‘It meant everything to me’

The FBI director’s concerns over terrorism are at ‘a whole other level’ 

U.S. campus protests spread to the Middle East and Europe  

Biden is letting Assad off the hook, with dangerous consequences

Apple banned this app for years. It’s now America’s No. 1 iPhone app. 

8 major newspapers join legal backlash against OpenAI, Microsoft

Fired Google workers who protested Israel deal file complaint with labor board

Americans are sleeping more than ever. See how you compare.

Parenting in Gaza today is so much more than keeping your children alive

In photos: Flash floods kill over 100 people in Kenya

A murder plot that cannot be ignored: India must come clean at last

How to confront antisemitism, deal with protests — and respect free speech

Is student loan debt an emergency? Take our quiz.

Nationals sweep away the Marlins to get back to .500

Jayden Daniels is latest in Washington’s checkered history of first-round QBs

The Rangers swept the Capitals, and it’s time for the new core to take charge

Trump Hush Money

Courtesy of the Drug Policy Alliance

States that passed medical marijuana laws saw a significant boost to older Americans' workforce participation, according to <a href="http://papers.nber.org/tmp/80914-w22688.pdf" target="_blank">a new working paper</a> from researchers at Johns Hopkins and Temple University. States with medical marijuana laws also saw improvements in overall health for older men, although the health effects for older women were more mixed.

Like many recent studies examining the effects of marijuana laws, this one compared what happened in medical marijuana states before and after the passage of medical pot provisions, and compared them to trajectories in similar states that did not implement medical marijuana. The data come from <a href="http://hrsonline.isr.umich.edu/" target="_blank">the Health and Retirement study</a>, a long-running survey of the health and economic well-being of older American adults.

The study found that, among individuals age 50 and older, “passage of [a medical marijuana law] leads to a 9.4 percent increase in the probability of employment and a 4.6 percent to 4.9 percent increase in hours worked per week.”


<i>
    [NFL’s top advocate for medical marijuana takes on Maryland regulators]
  </i>


Why the boost to employment? Simply put, overall health appeared to be better in states with medical marijuana laws. In those states, older men were 5 percent more likely to say they were in “very good” or “excellent” health. And part of the reason men rated their health better is because they were in less pain: the passage of a medical marijuana law led to roughly a 10 percent drop in the percent of men saying they experienced pain.

The health effect on women, however, appeared to be more mixed. “Surprisingly, among women we find evidence that passage of [a medical marijuana law] that provides legal access to the product increases the probability of reporting pain in the full sample by 1.3 percentage points (3.8 percent)." Nonetheless, the study found that like men, older women were about 5 percent more likely to report “very good” or “excellent” health after the passage of medical marijuana.

While the difference between men and women is puzzling, <a href="http://newsroom.cumc.columbia.edu/blog/2016/08/19/smoking-marijuana-provides-pain-relief-men-women/" target="_blank">a recent Columbia University study</a> offers a clue: Smoking marijuana provides more pain relief for men than for women, for reasons not yet fully understood.


<i>
    [One surefire way for Hillary Clinton to shore up support among young voters]
  </i>


Much of the debate around marijuana legalization centers on the potential effects on young people. This makes a certain amount of sense, as young, still-developing brains are at the highest risk for adverse effects from the use of any drug. But a surprising amount of new research suggests that older Americans will be much more affected by changes to marijuana law than previously thought.

Middle-aged Americans are now <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/09/02/middle-aged-parents-are-now-more-likely-to-smoke-weed-than-their-teenaged-kids/" target="_blank">more likely to use marijuana than their teenage children</a>, and the fastest increases in marijuana use are being seen among Americans age 55 and up.

The research is also starting to suggest that older marijuana users may benefit from better quality of life in their golden years. A study earlier this year found that <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/07/13/one-striking-chart-shows-why-pharma-companies-are-fighting-legal-marijuana/" target="_blank">Medicare prescriptions for a variety of drugs</a>, including painkillers, anti-anxiety medications and anti-nausea drugs, fell significantly in states that adopted medical marijuana laws.

<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/12/07/want-to-reduce-obesity-legalize-medical-marijuana-researchers-say/" target="_blank">Research has also shown</a> that for older people medical marijuana laws appear to be linked to increased exercise and overall wellness, simply because when you hurt less, you feel better and exercise more.

As with any drug — recreational or medical — there are risks associated with marijuana use. Driving while under the influence of marijuana is particularly dangerous, and marijuana use does carry a risk of dependency.

But researchers generally agree that, overall, there are <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/09/09/arizonas-governor-asked-voters-to-fact-check-whether-pot-is-safer-than-alcohol-so-we-did/" target="_blank">fewer risks associated with marijuana use</a> than there are with alcohol. And as the latest working paper shows, there are benefits to more widespread availability of medical marijuana that could result in a significant improvement in quality of life, particularly for older Americans.

Cornell University, BA in religious studies

Christopher Ingraham was a reporter on The Post’s business desk from 2014 to 2021. He currently writes <a href="https://thewhyaxis.substack.com">the Why Axis</a>, a newsletter about the data shaping and informing our lives.