[420 Girl]

Washington - In a quintessential exercise in bureaucratic hypocrisy, the University of Washington Medical Center decided Thursday to deny a liver transplant to Timothy Garon, a 56-year old musician suffering from hepatitis C, because he was found to have used medically prescribed marijuana to ease his abdominal pains. While this case reflects the general absurdity of government-sponsored anti-marijuana regulations, it is also a sad story about the incohesiveness that has long been prevalent in the medical community.

The United Network for Organ Sharing, the office responsible for overseeing the national organ transplant system, does not have its own criteria for acceptable transplant candidates, but instead leaves it up to the individual hospitals to decide who will be eligible to receive a transplant.

The reasoning for denying transplants for medical marijuana patients is inherently problematic in its rhetoric. Dr. Robert Sade, the director of the Institute of Human Values in Health Care at the Medical University of South Carolina, told the following to the Associated Press: "Marijuana, unlike alcohol, has no direct effect on the liver. It is however a concern … in that it's a potential indicator of an addictive personality." However, this justification is undermined by the fact that 13 states have opted to embrace a medicalized marijuana program, in which the substances are legally available under state law to patients with a doctor's prescription. Maybe this logic is just old fashioned, but following a doctor's prescribed advice hardly seems like evidence of an addictive personality. Do patients with a morphine prescription have to go through this?
Though doctors agree that smoking marijuana is out of the question after an organ transplant, as the drugs used to acclimate a patient's body to their new organ can sometimes cause a fatal infection if mixed with common molds found growing on marijuana or tobacco plants, there is no evidence to suggest that smoking marijuana before the transplant surgery would carry any negative side effects. Dale Gieringer, the coordinator of the California chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, had the following to say to the Associated Press: "Everyone agrees that marijuana is the least habit-forming of the recreational drugs, including alcohol. And unlike a lot of prescription medications, it's nontoxic to the liver." If what he says is true, it is ludicrously unethical for hospitals to deny transplants to users of legitimately prescribed medical marijuana.


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