Another Victim of the Drug War

I'm tempted to start a body count on how many lives the "War on Drugs" takes excepting --if only because they are less sympathetic -- the 1000s who have died on the streets as a result of gang warfare which is fueled by illicit drug sales. There have easily--EASILY--been more fatal casualties in the "Drug War" than the present wars in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. This is just the latest I've heard about...and perhaps one of the more tragic:

A musician who was denied a liver transplant because he used marijuana with medical approval under Washington state law to ease the symptoms of advanced hepatitis C died Thursday.

The death of Timothy Garon, 56, at Bailey-Boushay House, an intensive care nursing center was confirmed to The Associated Press by his lawyer, Douglas Hiatt, and Alisha Mark, a spokeswoman for Virginia Mason Medical Center, which operates Bailey-Boushay.

Dr. Brad Roter, the physician who authorized Garon to smoke pot to alleviate for nausea and abdominal pain and to stimulate his appetite, said he did not know it would be such a hurdle if Garon were to need a transplant.

Yes. If you smoke weed, for medical purposes no less, you will be denied a life-saving organ transplant. Yet, and as a Yankees fan it pains me to say this, as a life-long alcoholic baseball legend you can get a liver transplant...in spite of the fact that your habitual and grossly irresponsible drinking to excess over a span of decades killed your liver.

As incidents like these pile up, the already dubious "moral" cause for the "War on Drugs" erodes rapidly.

Hat tip to Radley for following this story.

R.I.P. Timothy Garon