Since 1998, due to a legal opinion by U.S.

attorney general Janet Reno,

Oregon physicians have used their federal prescribing licenses from the
Drug Enforcement Administration to order controlled substances - usually
secobarbital - for use in terminally ill patients' suicides. However, new
attorney general John Ashcroft was an outspoken critic of the Reno
opinion when he served in the U.S. Senate. He authored a 1997 letter to
Reno signed by seven other Senators urging a contrary opinion, and
criticized her final ruling as "bending the law" to facilitate assisted suicide.
George W. Bush also criticized the ruling and endorsed a bill to reverse it,
the Pain Relief Promotion Act, during the presidential campaign.

The Oregon Health Division's third annual report on operation of the

"Death with Dignity Act," summarized in the New England Journal of
Medicine, was said by the law's supporters to offer "compelling evidence"
that the Act "has given Oregon citizens comfort and control at the end of
their lives." Said Estelle Rogers, executive director of the Death with
Dignity National Center: "Oregon is a model for the nation, a place where
doctors and patients alike approach end-of-life issues with due seriousness
and compassion. We believe it's time for President Bush and the Attorney
General to do the same" [U.S. Newswire, 2/21/01].
But the same report hailed by Rogers as "a third year of good news" was
said by a prominent critic of Oregon's law to confirm that "the assisted-
suicide experiment has failed." Dr. Gregory Hamilton of Physicians for
Compassionate Care says that Oregon officials monitoring the practice of
assisted suicide "have neglected to report meaningful results." Case
reports are chiefly self-reporting by the physicians involved, and no effort
is made to find "complications" or problems not reported by those
assisting the suicide [PCC press release, 2/21/01].

The Oregon Health Division reported 27 deaths from physician-assisted

suicide in 2000, the same number as in 1999. The only case it found of
incomplete compliance with the Act was one in which a physician
submitted a consent form signed by one witness instead of two. Dr.
Hamilton notes, however, that the chief case of assisted suicide to receive
extensive news reporting in 2000 showed more irregularities than this.

The case of Joan Lucas received feature-length coverage for two days in
her local newspaper in June. Suffering from Lou Gehrig's disease, she
originally tried and failed to commit suicide by herself on January 16 - but
she and her family soon found more expert "assistance" and she died on
February 3.