Over this past weekend, California’s leading medical body voted unanimously to end a certain kind of discrimination against medical marijuana users that has been quietly preying on the most vulnerable among our community.
Reports have indicated that it has become commonplace in California state hospitals (including the likes of Cedars-Sinai, UCLA, UCSF, and Stanford Medical School) to deny patients organ transplants solely for the fact that they’ve been prescribed medical cannabis at one point in their life.
“One of the most tragic examples of this discrimination is seen in cases where patients lawfully using medical cannabis under a doctor’s recommendation are removed from the waiting list for an organ transplant,” explained advocacy group Americans For Safe Access.
Fortunately, it seems that the Golden State’s medical community is firing back in the name of all that is right. In denouncing the practice, the California Medical Association (CMA) declared that they wholly “oppose utilization of (1) reported marijuana use and (2) positive cannabis toxicology tests as a contraindication for potential organ transplant recipients, and use evidence-based medical findings to guide any alterations in this CMA policy.”
Though organ transplant clinics defer to federal law (under which marijuana is a Schedule I drug), the California state legislator is also currently considering a measure to prevent the clinics from discriminating against cannabis users.
