Medical Marijuana

Medical Marijuana Patient Denied Organ Transplant, Source: http://www.transplantcoordinatorsofamerica.com/img/organ-donation.jpgIn California, medical marijuana patients are banned from receiving organ transplants. However, it looks like there might finally be some progress in the works to solve a terrible technicality that is keeping sick people from getting help.

Patients, like Justin Turley, have been denied the life-saving transplants they need simply because they are medical cannabis users. Turley has lived with cirrhosis for the past thirteen years. The condition keeps him in constant pain and when using prescription pharmaceuticals for his pain, he was rendered a zombie.

Turley turned to medical cannabis for relief and found that he was able to eat again and was much more able to manage the pain. “It helped me alleviate my problems without all the complications,” said Turley.

Turley was told by his doctor that he would need to get a liver transplant to survive long-term so he went to UC San Diego hospital. There, he freely told the doctor that he was using cannabis for his condition and followed all the state laws. The doctor only told him that as long as he was using cannabis, he would not be allowed to be on the transplant list.

People like Turley are why politician Marc Levine has introduced a bill to prohibit medical cannabis patients from being excluded from transplant lists, commenting, “there’s no medical reason why these patients should be stigmatized or denied a life-saving opportunity.”

Since this story broke, a representative from UCSD has said that medical cannabis usage does not bar patients from transplant and that transplant candidacy is decided upon a whole litany of factors. I wonder if that is a recent policy change. Seems to me if that was their policy all along, Mr. Turley wouldn’t have much of a story to tell.