marijuana, medical marijuana, and organ transplants

From Gene Johnson in the C-J...

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.

This is the bottom-line economic issue: if you're not going to allow the market to work using prices, then the market will have to rely on criteria other than prices-- and struggle with a shortage. In general, this shortage results in dead people-- and here, it raises ethical/justice issues.

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

Not quite a states' rights issue, but a cousin...

Many doctors agree that using marijuana - smoking it, especially - is out of the question post-transplant....

The other side of the issue from a medical perspective and dealing with the economic shortage caused by government policy.