US

Report: Calif. hospital drops medical marijuana users from transplant lists

Stephanie Wang Contributor
Font Size:

It’s not exactly a death panel, but one Los Angeles hospital has apparently decided that the lives of marijuana users are not as valuable as the lives of others.

Legally smoking marijuana for medical reasons can get you taken off Cedars-Sinai Medical Center’s transplant lists, The Huffington Post reports.

Toni Trujillo was on the hospital’s kidney transplant list for six years when she was told she had been removed from the list for “substance abuse.”

Trujillo has been smoking marijuana legally, using the drug for two years to stimulate her appetite. This helped her increase and maintain protein levels while on dialysis.

Her case was not unique.

Last year a patient with inoperable liver cancer was removed from the hospital’s transplant list for smoking pot, according to The Huffington Post. That patient, who like Trujillo consumed the drug legally, is now expected by his doctors to die within 90 days, the report said.

Americans for Safe Access, a medical marijuana advocacy group, has called on the hospital to reassess its medical marijuana policy. The hospital did not comment on the case.

Stephanie Wang