Timothy Garon’s death comes a week after a University Medical Center committee had for the second time denied him a spot on the liver transplant list. The committee previously told him it would not consider placing him on the list until he completed a 60-day drug-treatment class.

"When a doctor authorizes medical marijuana, it's like a prescription. Telling a dying guy in his shape to wait 60 days is insulting and sickening in my opinion,” Garon’s lawyer, Douglas Hiatt said, according to the Seattle Post Intelligencer.

Harboview Medical Center previously turned him down, without any reason, Hiatt added.

“I’m not angry, I’m not mad, I’m just confused,” Garon, the lead singer for Nearly Dan, a Steely Dan cover-band, told the Associated Press last week, a few minutes after the hospital committee took the decision. He was suffering from hepatitis C.

Doctors say drug use and alcohol abuse are two factors they consider in deciding whether a patient can be enlisted for a transplant or not. The rule also applies to those who use medical marijuana to ease their pain under a doctor's supervision.

“Marijuana, unlike alcohol, has no direct effect on the liver. It is however a concern…in that it’s a potential indicator of an addictive personality,” Dr. Robert Sade, director of the Institute Values in Health Care at the Medical University of South Carolina, said, according to the AP.

“The concern is that patients who have been using it will not be able to stop,” Dr. Jorge Reyes, a liver transplant surgeon at the UW Medical Center, said.

The Virginia-based United Network for Organ Sharing, which supervises the nation’s transplant system, allows hospitals to take decisions on their own, not interfering in their criteria for transplant candidates.

Under federal law, marijuana is illegal. Some hospitals automatically reject people who use “illicit substances” even if the states allow it. Others give patients a chance to reapply for a transplant if they stay clean for six months.

Dr. Brad Roter, who prescribed marijuana to Garon, in order to alleviate nausea and abdominal pain and to stimulate his appetite, said he had no idea his prescription would be such a hurdle if Garon were to need a transplant.

According to pro-marijuana groups, there were several cases of such patients who were denied transplant because they used medical marijuana. Moreover, they cited at least two patient deaths in Oregon, California, since the mid-to-late ‘90s, when states began adopting medical marijuana laws.