Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents—and What They Mean for America's Future

by Jean M. Twenge

The generation gap around marijuana persisted even as Boomers grew into adulthood. In 1987, when it was revealed that Supreme Court nominee Douglas Ginsburg (b. 1947) had smoked marijuana “on a few occasions” as an undergraduate in the 1960s and as a young professor in the 1970s, his nomination collapsed under the disapproval of the Senate Judiciary Committee, most of whom where Greatests and Silents. Put on the spot in 1992 about whether he’d ever smoked pot, Bill Clinton (b. 1946) equivocated by saying he had tried marijuana but “didn’t inhale.” But by 2008, with the generation gap softening, Barack Obama’s (b. 1961) earlier admissions about smoking marijuana (and even using cocaine) when he was younger passed by with barely a mention.