ASHCROFT'S CALL IN OREGON CASE IS IN KEEPING WITH LAW

It is quite a jump in rational thinking to say, as right-to-die critics
have, that John Ashcroft is allowing his religious beliefs to supersede a
state law allowing Oregon doctors to prescribe lethal doses of medicine to
kill patients. John Ashcroft is upholding the rule of law and not pushing
his personal religious beliefs.

Ashcroft is correct in saying, "It's been a quite long-standing
understanding of the federal government that legitimate medical purposes
are healing and helping people, not killing people." (Nov. 26 News-Leader)
It seems to me seriously ill people need hope, not a drug overdose.

Historically, the federal government, not the states, has the final say
about the proper use of drugs governed by the Controlled Substances Act.
The plain facts are that Ashcroft simply restored a long-held judgment to
not allow legal use of controlled substances to assist suicide.

Clearly it was former Attorney General Janet Reno's political expediency to
arbitrarily ignore the principle in Oregon. Reno declared that she would
not enforce the federal law against Oregon's doctors who prescribed
controlled substances to kill a patient.

Ashcroft had written a letter on Nov. 7 to Asa Hutchinson at the DEA making
it plain that federal drug laws, like all other federal laws, were to be
applied uniformly in all 50 states. "Assisting suicide is not a legitimate
medical purpose," Ashcroft's memo stated, and doctors who assist suicides
act "inconsistently with the public interest." Accordingly, even though
suicide remains legal in Oregon, the DEA would be authorized to revoke the
federal prescribing license of any doctor who uses controlled substances
lethally rather than medically.

At least 70 people have ended their lives since the law took effect in
1997, according to the Oregon Health Division. All have done so with a
federally controlled substance such as a barbiturate.

Reinstating the traditional interpretation of the federal law in no way
stops physicians from prescribing controlled substances as necessary for
the relief of pain, as long as their intent is to relieve pain rather than
to overdose a patient and cause death. Aggressive treatment of pain is a
proper medical act.

This is not a question of personal religious beliefs. Ashcroft has properly
restored the federal standards in the use of controlled substances.