Dr. Peter Grinspoon’s new book “Aging Well with Cannabis” reframes the plant as what one geriatrician calls an “exit drug”: a tool for helping older Americans reduce their reliance on the prescription medications stacking up in their medicine cabinets. With 60 million Americans over 65 and twice that over 50, the book targets the fastest-growing cannabis demographic in the country.
The senior cannabis audience finally has a book written for it.
Dr. Peter Grinspoon’s Aging Well with Cannabis: Feel Better, Sleep Better, and Live Better with Marijuana and CBD hit shelves on May 5, 2026, from Sterling Ethos. Grinspoon is a primary care physician and cannabis specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital, an instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School, a certified addiction medicine specialist and a contributing editor to Harvard Health Publications. The book is the first major mainstream guide aimed squarely at what its publisher calls the “canna-curious senior.”
The framing is what makes it interesting.
Cannabis as an exit drug
Dr. Mikhail Kogan, the chief medical officer of GW Center for Integrative Medicine and an associate professor of medicine at George Washington University, wrote one of the book’s most striking endorsements.
“In my work as an integrative geriatrician, I have seen firsthand that, when used thoughtfully, cannabis can serve not as a ‘gateway drug,’ but as an exit drug, helping many older adults reduce reliance on polypharmacy.”
Dr. Mikhail Kogan, GW Center for Integrative Medicine
“Polypharmacy” is the medical term for what happens when a patient is on five or more prescription medications at once. It’s the standard condition for a meaningful share of Americans over 65, and it carries documented risks: drug interactions, cognitive decline, falls, hospitalizations and worsening quality of life. The pharmaceutical alternatives commonly prescribed for chronic pain, anxiety and insomnia (the three conditions Grinspoon’s book addresses most directly) are also among the most likely to drive that polypharmacy spiral.
Grinspoon’s argument, supported by Kogan’s geriatric framing and Dr. Donald Abrams’s blurb on cannabis in oncology and palliative care, is that cannabis offers a lower-toxicity option for many of those exact conditions. Used carefully, it can help simplify medication regimens rather than complicate them. Used carelessly, it can do real damage. The book exists because nobody had written the guide that splits the difference.
The audience the industry has underserved
The senior cannabis audience
#1
Fastest-growing demographic for medical cannabis use
272
Pages of doctor-vetted guidance
Seniors are the fastest-growing cannabis demographic in the United States, and most cannabis marketing is still pointed at people half their age. The information available to older adults online has been described by Dr. Donald Abrams, professor emeritus of medicine at the University of California San Francisco, as essentially “fake news promulgated on the internet and social media.” Family caregivers trying to help an aging parent navigate cannabis for the first time have had almost nowhere to turn for vetted, doctor-written guidance.
Grinspoon’s book covers the practical questions older adults and their caregivers actually ask. Dosage. Drug interactions. Product types. How to talk to your doctor about cannabis. How to become a certified medical patient. How to buy from a dispensary. What to expect from edibles versus tinctures versus smoking. The science behind why cannabis helps with specific conditions and where the evidence is still thin.
Chapter 4 covers potential health benefits. Chapter 5 covers potential harms. The structure is honest about both, which is what separates evidence-based guidance from advocacy.
Why Grinspoon
Grinspoon is one of a small number of physicians publishing on cannabis from inside the medical mainstream rather than around it. He sits on the board of Doctors for Drug Policy Reform and advises the Parabola Group, which works on social justice in cannabis. He spent two years as an associate director of the Massachusetts Physician Health Service, treating physicians with addiction. His memoir Free Refills: A Doctor Confronts His Addiction documented his own opioid recovery.
That biography matters here. He’s not selling cannabis as a miracle. He’s a Harvard-trained doctor who has worked extensively in addiction medicine and who is also clear-eyed about the legitimate medical applications of a plant the establishment has spent decades demonizing. Foreword by Dr. Staci Gruber, who runs the Marijuana Investigations for Neuroscientific Discovery program at McLean Hospital and is one of the country’s leading neuroscientists studying cannabis.
The credential stack is the point. The book exists to be the resource a primary care physician can recommend to a 72-year-old patient without worrying about what that patient is going to encounter when they go look for information themselves.
Where to find it
Aging Well with Cannabis: Feel Better, Sleep Better, and Live Better with Marijuana and CBD is available now in trade paperback ($19.99) and ebook ($9.99) from Sterling Ethos. Available through the publisher, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, Bookshop, Target and Walmart.
