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    Marijuana users - including medical-pot patients using the drug legally-are being denied organ transplants even when they're facing death. Last year, this issue finally had a tragic spotlight cast on it when Tim Garon, a 56-year-old Seattle musician suffering from hepatitis C, died after being denied a new liver at the University of Washington Medical Center. His rejection was due in part to his use of medical marijuana to treat Hep C, despite his full compliance with Washington state law. (In a bitter footnote, Garon's son, Lennon Garon, is facing trial for growing the pot his father used - the very medicine that cost Tim his shot at recieving a life-saving liver.)
    Maybe Garon just wasn't rich and famous enough. Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh recieved a new liver in '98, even though his own hep c was the result of hard partying. (In Lesh's defense, at every concert he now appeals to fans to become organ donors.) And the late Papa John Phillips got a new liver in '92 despite years of drinking and drugging - and was photographed boozing soon after.
    Doug Hiatt, the attorney for Tim and Lennon Garon, calls the procedure for choosing organ recipients a "start chamber" (i.e., a legal or administrative body making arbitrary decisions and operating in secret) - one that awards the organs to upper-middle-class whites who conform to particular values. For example, this organ transplant bias is also enforced against the homless.
    Solutions? Grassroots efforts are now afoot to reform this warped process, and articles appearing in medical journals in Canada, Europe and even the U.S. have concluded that there is no rational basis for restrictive transplant polocies directed against cannabis users, since no evidence has been found linking pot to organ damage.
    If America really is "The land of change" these days, maybe this issue will finally get some desperately needed attention.-Mark Miller

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Thebooedocksaint said:
See us folks down here in Kansas woulda just strung up those people denying them. Then smoke a j and cut them loose after the j is out, it gets your point across.

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