Dank Dads: The Middle-Aged Men Who Love Cannabis
Pop culture likes to paint the typical cannabis fan as somewhere between their mid and late twenties, a bit scruffy, a bit out of shape and laid back. Understandably this has colored a lot of people’s moral perception, too.
However, it looks like the average cannabis fan is more in line with the stuffy grey-haired dad our slacker heroes are portrayed as being at odds with.
Canadian Cannabis Legalisation
Canada will be legalising cannabis for medicinal and recreational use by the end of the summer, and it seems like the main demographic celebrating this by sparking up will be middle-aged men between 35 and 54. A report suggests that dispensaries are going to receive a lot of foot traffic from silver smokers who may have had their first tokes decades ago in college.
74% of the middle-aged demographic polled admitted to some level of experience with cannabis in the past, and another 41% said that they had smoked for non-medical reasons in the past five years. Legaisation in Canada may give these dads a way to revisit their rebellious youth in a legal way.
Silver Smokers
These men may find their way back to cannabis as a way to relax. Why not? The kids are likely out of the house, their career is on track, and they can’t figure out how to work a PlayStation; so weed is likely the way to go. It is for this reason that researchers predict that dads may spend around 68% more than the average cannabis customer.
Cannabis may become somewhat more expensive than it is on the black market after legalisation, rising from $8.24 to $9.33. The added cost is offset by the fact that consumers won’t be breaking the law and won’t have to talk to scary dealers. Dads tend to be a lot more financially secure, so this increase in cost won’t be too much of an issue for them.
Cultural Shift
The silver smokers could just be another example of the huge shift in cultural attitudes in the West towards weed. Increasingly people are less Reefer Madness, and more Mad for Reefer. More research needs to be done but the recreational and medicinal advantages of cannabis are becoming more known than ever, and now that it has been demystified a lot of the fear surrounding it has been diffused.
