Number of drug-addicted seniors to surge as boomers retire

Mavis Becker was a little early to the psychedelic Sixties. In the mid-Fifties, at the tender age of 14, she started smoking pot. Within a decade, most of her friends were taking Timothy Leary's advice to turn on, tune in and toke up.

Not much has changed since.

Ms. Becker may be a little older and a little greyer, but she still enjoys a good joint on the balcony of her home in Burnaby, B.C. She sometimes even shares one with her 93-year-old father, who suffers from dementia and diabetes. "I find that if I share a joint with him he tends to relax and go to bed quietly," Ms. Becker said.

As the baby-boom generation limps into old age, they're bringing hippie-era drug habits with them.

"There's so many of us you wouldn't believe it," Ms. Becker said of seniors on drugs. "My friends are pretty much all like me."