DON'T STIGMATIZE MEDICAL-MARIJUANA USE

A recent Associated Press story told of a dying man who was refused a
transplant because he used medical marijuana. This story disgusts me. Are we
living in the 21st century or the early 20th?

The reasoning behind this refusal for a transplant is extremely flawed
and only proves that political agendas are more important in this
country than human life.

This man was refused a liver transplant because he used medical
marijuana legally in his state. Marijuana bypasses the liver when
smoked or vaporized and has no effect at all.

Marijuana has been used as medicine for millennia. Studies have shown
marijuana to be one of the safest medicinal herbs on the planet, and
no one has ever died from it in history.

Pharmaceuticals kill more people each year than all illicit drugs
combined. Opiates are the standard drug for hepatitis C pain, and
these drugs are very hard on the liver - yet this man is denied life
because he used something that doesn't make the pharmaceutical
companies money.

Understandably, the organ shortage means that patients must be
approved for transplant, but to exclude someone because they use a
benign herb that has been proven safe for millennia is plain wrong. I
wonder if this committee realized that the opiates the man was given
for hep.C were probably what destroyed his liver.

It doesn't seem right that they can help destroy this man's liver with
opiate drugs and then deny him the right to live because he found
relief from an herb. What have we become when we will allow dangerous
man-made chemicals to be used before and in replacement of natural and
nontoxic herbs, then deny someone their life because they chose the
natural way?

North Dakota does not have medical marijuana laws - yet. I'm hoping
North Dakotans have more compassion than the people on this panel.

Del Snavely

Snavely is a member of the Medical Cannabis Association of North
Dakota.