Medical Discrimination Toward MMJ Patients

I am looking for a primary care doctor and as a Washington state DSHS client there are limited options within our state's Medicaid system. I was finally able to get an appointment at Pacific Medical's (PacMed) Northgate clinic with a doctor that is accepting Medicaid patients and I was able to be seen the following afternoon, less than 24 hours hence. I was thrilled and quite frankly impressed at the excellence of the service provided the person on the phone that took my information and set the appointment.

My expectations were shattered that following afternoon. It seems that when I was referred to a PacMed specialist, by a former doctor, the fact that I am a "marijuana user' was included in the referring documentation. The doctor asked me if I still used marijuana before I brought it up, so being honest, I explained that I have had a medical recommendation for the use of marijuana for 2-3 years and that I use marijuana for the relief of nausea, and other G.I. distress, that had worsened as well as becoming chronic, after I had a Gastric-By-Pass operation. I explained that this condition is not relieved by any other method, at least not without side-effects that are at times worse than the condition itself and altogether unwanted in any case.

The doctor had been reading my chart and the notes when I started talking but as soon as it hit his brain that I was saying that I am a "medical marijuana user" he set my chart down on the desk and closed it while he politely listened as I finished my explanation.

Then he said that he had to inform me, "that the clinic has a policy" regarding "marijuana users", without respect to medical vs. recreational use, which states that they absolutely will not prescribe any medications which the clinic lists as addictive or which the clinic determines has a high potential for abuse to people who use marijuana. He would be specifically prevented from prescribing any narcotic pain medication such as Vicodin - whether he felt it appropriate or not - by corporate fiat. I think he added that last bit about the narcotic pain medications because one of my main issues - after the nausea and PTSD/Depression issues - has been severe and chronic pain. He would need to get all my medical records and a UA/Drug Screen before he would be able to prescribe ANY medications at all so I should contact my prior provider for any refills I may need until he can get all the information.

I realized that I was being told that I am a drug addict and was going to be treated like one. So, I asked the doctor this question: "Does this policy apply alcohol &/or tobacco users?" I should surprise absolutely nobody that the answer was, with a hint of humor in it, "No." So, I took it one step further, I asked: "Does this clinic or PacMed as a whole, have a similar policy regarding the treatment of a patient that a doctor knows, or reasonably suspects, is an alcoholic or addicted to nicotine?" Again the answer was, no. At least for the second question he added the qualifier that he wasn't aware of one, he'd have to check. I told him that I was 99.99999% sure that there wasn't and I still stand by that belief.

So, what this comes down to is this: If you use a legal medicine for a condition and that medicine is effective for the condition for which you use it, and they (PacMed) don't approve of that particular medicine, they will not allow their doctors to treat you as anything other than an addict until you prove you are not an addict by quitting the medicine (otherwise legal and effective) that they don't like. If I'd just quit "smoking pot" then I can get Vicodin and Oxy-whatever-I-want. This is silly on it's face as well as being discrimination against medical marijuana users.

I have contacted the Washington State office of the ACLU and they have given me a few resources to investigate and I am looking for a good lawyer to see about bringing a discrimination suit against PacMed. What I would tell every medical marijuana patient is get your complete medical records, including doctors notes and referral notes, to see what information is being shared among your medical providers. You may be branded as an addict or a drug-seeker and you don't know it. You may not be getting your doctors best medical decisions because of a policy that you don't realize is affecting your doctors ability to determine and implement a course of treatment.

I will be doing some more research on this and writing about my experiences here on my blog and I'll be sharing these with Steve over at Toke of the Town and with the good folks over at Northwest Leaf as well as anywhere else that will listen. This is discrimination, plain and simple, and it, as will all prejudice and discrimination, must not go unchallenged. We, the MMJ community, deserve to be treated as patients. We do not deserve to be treated as though every marijuana user is a drug-addict, if for no other reason than the fact that it is just not true.