Medical Marijuana – Death in Disguise

NOTE: As school begins to wind down for me, I am going to begin working to post many of my undergraduate and graduate essays on the site. This really isn’t due to an overinflated ego, despite what some people might tell you, but rather my desire to maintain some connection to the myriad of works I completed while jumping through hoops for my degrees. This one, a short essay I wrote for Current Social Problems which weighs in at a petite 315 words, discusses the death of a man who was passed over for a liver transplant because he used medically prescribed marijuana. Later, when I am actually done with school, I will come back and throw in some real links to source articles, etc.

In the AP article Medical marijuana user who was denied liver transplant dies, the author reports on the recent death of a 56 year old Washington man who was awaiting a liver transplant due to a Hepatitis C infection which he contracted as a young man, and how he was repeatedly passed over for a new liver because of his doctor condoned and prescribed use of the “illicit” drug Marijuana.

It’s time for the system which allowed this man to die to change. That this even happened is a travesty, and an outrage to me as an American citizen. I recognize that there are many more individuals needing organ transplants than organs available for transplant, and that in any situation where demand exceeds supply there must be criteria for deciding who lives and who dies. More people need to know, however, that in cases like this one at least, following their doctors’ recommendation for the use of medical marijuana might actually eliminate their chance for receiving life-saving treatment. Put another way: their doctors’ prescription for pain managing, appetite enhancing, nausea reducing marijuana might actually be a death warrant in disguise.

In a world full of crack, heroin, and methamphetamine addicts, it is unfathomable to me that life-saving treatment might be withheld from someone who was following doctors’ orders and smoking marijuana to manage the symptoms of their illness. We are not talking about the recreational use of Marijuana here, but rather the legalized use of marijuana for purposes for which it has been legalized by the electorate of the state in which this outrage took place. I like to think that a day is coming when we as a nation will look back on the days of marijuana prohibition, mass marijuana incarceration, and horrific situations such as this one with a genuine, yet completely appropriate sadness at our own ignorance.

Tags: advocacy, marijuana, medical marijuana, Policy, political, politics