U.S. Won’t Block Oregon Suicide Law, Reno Says

Clearing the way for more physicians to assist in suicides in Oregon and perhaps elsewhere, Atty. Gen. Janet Reno ruled Friday that federal drug agents may not interfere with doctors who help terminally ill patients commit suicide under a state law passed last year.

In an opinion requested by members of Congress, Reno said that the federal Controlled Substances Act could not be used against Oregon doctors who prescribe medications to help patients take their own lives.

While the opinion seemed written to apply specifically to Oregon’s first-in-the-nation Death With Dignity statute, authorities said it could apply as well to a half-dozen or more states, not including California, where similar laws are being debated.

At least three terminally ill Oregonians have killed themselves with lethal prescriptions since November, a month after the state law took effect.

Hours after Reno’s ruling became known, a bipartisan bill was introduced in Congress to counter her opinion. Co-sponsored by Rep. Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and by Rep. James L. Oberstar (D-Minn.), the measure would explicitly ban the use of drugs for assisted suicides.

After a seven-month review, Reno overruled a position taken by the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, one of her agencies. DEA Administrator Thomas Constantine said last year that drug prescriptions written by Oregon doctors under its new state law would violate federal law controlling such substances and that physicians could be prosecuted or penalized, including revocation of their licenses to issue prescriptions.

Reno, however, said there was “no evidence that Congress . . . intended to displace the states as the primary regulators of the medical profession.” Federal law “is essentially silent with regard to regulating the practice of medicine that involves legally available drugs.”

Provisions of Oregon’s assisted suicide statute originally were approved by voters in 1994 by a margin of 51% to 49%. Returned to voters by the Legislature for a second referendum in 1997, the act was affirmed, 60% to 40%.

Last October, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear a case brought by opponents of the law, thus allowing it to go into effect.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), among those who had asked for Reno’s opinion, said her decision “sends an important signal that the federal government has no business substituting its judgment for that of Oregon voters.”

Advocates of the statute also praised the ruling.

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Barbara Coombs Lee, director of Oregon’s Compassion in Dying Federation, said that Reno’s opinion “clearly supports our society’s belief that decisions about health care should be made based on local community standards and enforced by local authorities, not the DEA or the federal government.”

Opponents of the statute expressed outrage at Reno’s ruling.

Lori Hougens of the Washington-based National Right to Life Committee said that it is “unconscionable” for the Justice Department “to pull the safety net out from under the most vulnerable people in our society, people who are terminally ill. . . . And we call on Congress to act promptly to prevent any more tragic deaths in Oregon.”

In addition to introduction of the Hyde-Oberstar bill, Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.), co-chairman of the House Pro-Life Caucus, predicted “a massive bipartisan effort in Congress to reinstate the DEA’s position.”

Another Republican, Sen. Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he would oppose Reno’s ruling as “contrary to the clear statutory language.”

The Oregon law basically allows a patient who has been diagnosed by two physicians as having less than six months to live to seek a doctor’s prescription for a lethal dose of barbiturates.

The law then requires that doctors determine that the patient is not suffering from depression or other mental illness and to impose a 15-day waiting period before completing the prescription for the drugs.

Noting that Oregon’s law provides the waiting period and that a doctor may prescribe drugs only--not inject or administer them--Reno said her opinion was limited to the “particular circumstances” in that state and should not be interpreted as blanket approval of future efforts by other states to legislate assisted suicides.

In Michigan, where Dr. Jack Kevorkian has been prosecuted--but not convicted--for helping terminally ill patients commit suicide, a local group says it has collected enough signatures to put legalization of assisted suicide on the state ballot.

Reno warned that doctors who ignore the safeguards in Oregon’s law, or physicians in other states with no assisted-suicide statute, could face federal penalties if they provide lethal prescriptions for terminally ill patients.