By a 33-1 vote, the Senate Monday approved AB 258, by Assemblymember Marc Levine (D-San Rafael), to make it easier for medicinal cannabis patients to receive a life-saving organ donation.
“Arcane public health policies treat medical cannabis patients as drug abusers. As a result, too often, patients are denied a life-saving organ transplant solely because they are prescribed medical cannabis,” said Levine. “Many of these patients have died after being denied an organ transplant, and many more are in jeopardy right now. The Medical Cannabis Organ Transplant Act (AB 258) will save lives by ensuring medical cannabis patients are not discriminated against in the organ transplant process.”
AB 258 would prohibit a hospital, physician, or any participant in the organ transplant process from using a patient’s use of medical cannabis as the sole reason in denying his or her eligibility as an organ recipient, except when medical cannabis use is clinically significant to that decision.
Cannabis is often prescribed to cancer patients to ease the pain and side effects caused by chemotherapy. These same patients often find themselves in need of an organ transplant. When they test positive for cannabis, they are often denied a place on the national organ transplant list.
“The Medical Cannabis Organ Transplant Act will bring organ transplant policies in California up to date with the growing body of scientific evidence surrounding medicinal cannabis, and will ultimately increase patient welfare and survival rates,” said Don Duncan California Director for Americans for Safe Access. “By ending discrimination against patients, the bill will reduce unnecessary suffering and avoidable deaths.”
AB 258 has been approved by both the Assembly and the Senate and now goes Governor Brown for his consideration.
Assemblymember Levine represents the 10th Assembly District, which includes Marin and Sonoma Counties.
LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL’S DIGEST
The people of the State of California do enact as follows:
SECTION 1.
Section 7151.36 is added to the Health and Safety Code, to read:
7151.36.
(a) A hospital, physician and surgeon, procurement organization, or other person shall not determine the ultimate recipient of an anatomical gift based solely upon a potential recipient’s status as a qualified patient, as defined in Section 11362.7, or based solely on upon a positive test for the use of medical marijuana by a potential recipient who is a qualified patient, as defined in Section 11362.7, except to the extent that the qualified patient’s use of medical marijuana has been found by a physician and surgeon, following a case-by-case evaluation of the potential recipient, to be medically significant to the provision of the anatomical gift.