Willamette Week | “Organ Failure” | May 21st, 2008

Garon, a 56-year-old professional musician who had hepatitis C, died after a University of Washington Medical Center committee denied him a spot on a liver-transplant list. Part of their reason: Garon used medical marijuana—which is legal under Washington law.

Garon wouldn’t have fared any better in Oregon, where medical marijuana has been legal since 1999. Hospitals here refuse to perform transplants on patients who treat their severe pain, nausea and other symptoms under the Oregon Medical Marijuana Program.

The state’s largest transplant program, run jointly by Oregon Health & Science University and the Portland VA Medical Center, turns away patients who use marijuana. Legacy Health System also performs kidney transplants and refuses marijuana users.

Those are the only two transplant programs in the state, leaving Oregon’s medical marijuana patients completely out in the cold.

It’s impossible to say anyone died just because they didn’t get a transplant. But at least 30 Oregonians who use medical weed have died in the past 10 years after hospitals denied them new organs, says Paul Stanford, head of the THC Foundation, a chain of medical-marijuana clinics based in Portland.

“It’s a death sentence,” says Madeline Martinez, head of the Oregon branch of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. “Most of the people have already expired because they didn’t have the transplant.”

Those affected include Jim Klahr, a 56-year-old professional musician from Brookings. He suffers from cirrhosis and hepatitis C, and quit taking medical marijuana in 2004 to qualify for a new liver.

Meanwhile, he lives with crippling nausea that used to vanish with a single puff of smoke. “I’ve capitulated because basically I don’t have much of a choice,” says Klahr, who sits on the 11-member state Advisory Committee on Medical Marijuana.

OHSU doctors also bar marijuana users because of medical concerns, including a higher risk of infection and pulmonary problems. Users of other illegal drugs, drinkers and even tobacco smokers are also barred from getting transplants, but anyone can join once they pass a drug test and meet other requirements.

Dr. William Bennett, head of kidney transplants at Legacy, says those are the same reasons his program bars marijuana users. He and Seely also say patients on mind-altering drugs are less likely to stick with their treatment in the long run, leading to a higher rate of transplant failure.

It amazes me when I read quotes from medical professionals that are so ignorant about cannabis.  Take that line “Users of other illegal drugs, drinkers and even tobacco smokers are also barred from getting transplants”.  Because those medical marijuana patients are just more “illegal drug users”?  They’re just people looking to get high recreationally, like smokers and drinkers?

“Anyone can join once they pass a drug test?”  What other legal, doctor-recommended medicines will you be testing for?  Lipitor?  Xanax?  OxyContin?  Percocet?  Viagra?  No, you’ll be testing for coke, meth, heroin, and of course, marijuana.

“Patients on mind-altering drugs are less likely to stick with their treatment?”  What, you don’t think OxyContin is mind-altering?  Have you ever listened to Rush Limbaugh?

“Risk of infection and pulmonary problems?”  Once again, cannabis can be grown organically and taken orally or in vapor form - no infections or lung problems to speak of!

They can wrap it in as many excuses as they want, but these transplant programs simply want to discriminate against cannabis users because they have a moral issue with cannabis.

Medical marijuana patients face transplant hurdles | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle
SEATTLE — Timothy Garon’s face and arms are hauntingly skeletal, but the fluid building up in his abdomen makes the 56-year-old musician look eight months pregnant.

His liver, ravaged by hepatitis C, is failing. Without a new one, his doctors tell him, he will be dead in days.

But Garon’s been refused a spot on the transplant list, largely because he has used marijuana, even though it was legally approved for medical reasons.

With the scarcity of donated organs, transplant committees like the one at the University of Washington Medical Center use tough standards, including whether the candidate has other serious health problems or is likely to drink or do drugs.

And with cases like Garon’s, they also have to consider — as a dozen states now have medical marijuana laws — if using cannabis with a doctor’s blessing should be held against a dying patient in need of a transplant.

The Virginia-based United Network for Organ Sharing, which oversees the nation’s transplant system, leaves it to individual hospitals to develop criteria for transplant candidates.

At some, people who use “illicit substances” — including medical marijuana, even in states that allow it — are automatically rejected. At others, such as the UCLA Medical Center, patients are given a chance to reapply if they stay clean for six months. Marijuana is illegal under federal law.

This continued discrimination against medical users of marijuana has got to stop.  It’s beyond irony that someone in need of a liver transplant is punished for using the medicine that doesn’t harm the liver; it’s cruel.

Some hospitals told Garon he could be eligible if he would only complete a 60-day rehab or six months of abstinence.  Two-to-six months without treatment with marijuana means 60 to 180 days of using other drugs that are fatally toxic to the man’s liver.  So it’s really a crapshoot: use marijuana to feel better and face certain death from liver failure or don’t use marijuana and feel awful and take drugs that accelerate certain death from liver failure.