Global Ganja Report

Advocacy group Americans for Safe Access (ASA) issued a letter Nov. 17 urging that Los Angeles' prestigious Cedars-Sinai Medical Center promptly re-list 63-year-old patient Norman B. Smith for a liver transplant. Smith was diagnosed with inoperable liver cancer in 2009 and became eligible for a transplant at Cedars-Sinai the following year. Smith's oncologist at Cedars-Sinai, Dr. Steven Miles, approved of his cannabis use to deal with the effects of chemotherapy and pain from an unrelated back surgery. But in February he was removed from the transplant list after testing positive for cannabis use.

"Cedars, like other transplant centers across the country, will de-list patients who test positive for marijuana even if it's being legally used under state law," says ASA's Kris Hermes. "There are often stringent requirements for being re-listed like those at Cedars—six months or more of testing negative for marijuana and weekly substance abuse counseling."

"Denying necessary transplants to medical marijuana patients is the worst kind of discrimination," said ASA shief counsel Joe Elford, who also authored the letter to Cedars-Sinai. "Cedars-Sinai would not be breaking any laws, federal or otherwise, by granting Norman Smith a liver transplant, and it's certainly the ethical thing to do."

Smith is not the only medical marijuana patient in the US being denied a transplant. At least one other Cedars-Sinai patient has been kicked off the transplant list for legal medical marijuana use. Over the past four years, ASA has received numerous reports of patients being purged from transplant lists across California, as well as in other medical marijuana states like Hawaii, Oregon, and Washington. In 2008, Seattle resident and medical marijuana patient Timothy Garon died after being denied a liver transplant by the University of Washington Medical Center. A year later, in 2009, Big Island resident and medical marijuana patient Kimberly Reyes died at Hilo Hospital after being denied a liver transplant.

Cedars-Sinai is demanding that Smith not only abstain from marijuana use for at least six months, forcing him to undergo random tests, but he is also required to participate in weekly substance abuse counseling over the same period. Although Smith was within two months of receiving a transplant before he was de-listed, he will be put at the bottom of the list even after satisfying the policy requirements.

"ASA seeks to change this harmful and uncompassionate policy not only for Smith's benefit, but also for the benefit of numerous other medical marijuana patients who are being made to suffer unnecessarily as a result of political ideology," said Elford.

Smith not only has the support of his oncologist and other Cedars-Sinai staff, but also his psychologist, who wrote a strong letter of recommendation that Smith be approved for a liver transplant. Nonetheless, Dr. Steven D. Colquhoun, the director of Cedars-Sinai's Liver Transplant Program, referred to Smith's legal medical marijuana use as "substance abuse." In a letter sent to Smith in May, Dr. Colquhoun indicated that the liver transplant center "must consider issues of substance abuse seriously since it does often play a role in the evolution of diseases that may require transplantation, and may adversely impact a new organ after a transplant." Despite Dr. Colquhoun's assertions, an independent study has shown that cannabis use has no adverse impact on the survival rate of transplant recipients. (Americans for Safe Access, Nov. 17)

Graphic by Americans for Safe Access