The War on Drugs kills people . . . and not the ones you'd think

Tim Garon, lead singer for a Steely Dan cover band, has died because the University of Washington Medical Center denied him a liver transplant.

Why did they deny Tim a liver transplant?

Because he had used medical marijuana to control the pain.

Which is legal in Washington.

Here's the whole disturbing story from Reality Catcher (h/t Drug War Rant):

The national outrage continues at the treatment of Tim Garon, who was denied a liver transplant largely because, at the advice of his physician, he used medical marijuana, which is legal in the state of Washington.

The uproar has sent the University of Washington Medical Center into full damage-control mode. They are now desperately backpedaling away from their earlier admission that Garon was, in fact, denied the transplant because of medical marijuana.

UW officials now vaguely cite "other factors," but it's too late: Two separate physicians, including transplant chief Dr. Jorge Reyes, already admitted in an Associated Press story that marijuana was the reason.

In that story, Dr. Reyes said Garon was denied the transplant because he, Dr. Reyes, feared that Garon wouldn't be able to stop smoking marijuana after the operation. And another UW doctor claimed that marijuana commonly contains mold that could cause organ rejection in a transplant patient. Both of these, bereft as they are of logic, are tacit admissions that marijuana was, in fact, the reason Tim Garon was rejected as a transplant recipient.

Meanwhile, the spin control continues, with UW communications specialist Mary Guiden today emailing me, "Although medical marijuana may be an issue in rare cases, it is never the sole determinant in arriving at medical decisions about candidates for organ transplants, and whether a patient is listed."

Guiden went on to tell me "the Liver Transplant Committee looks at a number of other issues, including behavioral concerns such as a history of substance abuse or dependency. If such a history exists, then the Committee looks at the period of abstinence the candidate has demonstrated to date, efforts made to maintain this abstinence, and the potential to abuse again."

Seems we're back to Mary Jane again, Mary. You are attempting to frame the debate in terms of "substance abuse or dependency," when we are talking about doctor-recommended use of legal medical marijuana. You are attempting to impose the model of "abstinence, and the potential to abuse again"; that's trying to impose an addiction scenario on doctor-recommended medical usage of legal medicine. That is intellectually dishonest, and morally bankrupt: You are making it sound as if Tim Garon had been sucking down gallons of whiskey or scarfing down lines of coke. Tim wasn't abusing anything. He didn't need to "abstain" from anything. He was using medical marijuana.

The truly upsetting part about this one is that, as a Libertarian, I cannot blame the State, because the government in Washington had done the right thing: making medical marijuana legal. I cannot fault state legislators for not having the foresight to include a provision that medical professionals will not be allowed to discriminate against patients on the basis of their use of natural cannabis as an analgesic.