TERRORIZING THE TERMINALLY ILL

Dear Attorney General Ashcroft:

After the terrible events of Sept. 11, you have held numerous press
conferences. On each of those occasions, you have warned us to remain
alert and to report anything that could be construed as a terrorist
activity or threat.

In the interest of fulfilling my civic obligation, I wish to bring to
your attention what I consider to be a terroristic threat to the peace
and well-being of some of our country's citizens:

Regrettably, it is you, Mr. Attorney General, who is the perpetrator
of this terror.

On Nov. 6, you issued a decision intended to effectively nullify
Oregon's death-with-dignity law, by declaring that the dispensing of
legal drugs by licensed physicians to assist the suicide of the
terminally ill is not a "legitimate medical purpose" within the
meaning of federal law.

In reversing your predecessor on this matter, you have interfered with
a voter-approved law in the state of Oregon and struck terror in the
hearts of the suffering terminally ill and their families.

Why, Mr. Attorney General, at the very moment you are urging us to go
on with our daily lives and assuring us we need not live in fear,
would you add to the fear of Oregon's terminally ill patients and, by
extension, those suffering from painful fatal illnesses elsewhere?

Why would you, who repeatedly invokes the well-being of America's
citizens, take away the rights of a few to decide when their suffering
is too great to bear? Why would you put a higher value on the
misguided views of the federal Drug Enforcement Agency than those of
dying patients whose suffering cannot be satisfactorily alleviated
with routine pain management - and over those of anguished families
who would permit their terminally ill member to decide when to end
unendurable and irreversible pain?

I'm sure I speak for many Americans, Mr. Attorney General, when I say
I'm vastly more concerned with having the DEA stop the tide of illegal
drugs crossing our borders and addicting America's children than in
its interfering with a twice voter-approved state law that allows the
use of controlled substances - in the most private, humane, narrowly
defined way - to end a terminally ill patient's suffering.

Three years ago, after noting opposition to Oregon's law, Attorney
General Janet Reno issued an order saying there was no evidence the
Controlled Substances Act was intended to displace states as primary
regulators of the medical profession or determine what constitutes a
legitimate medical practice.

You have now reversed Reno's decision, citing a Supreme Court ruling
earlier this year (U.S. v. Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative, 532
U.S. 483).

But your interpretation is faulty, Mr. Attorney General. The court was
ruling on the use of illegal drugs like marijuana as pain relievers.
The Oregon law addresses only legitimate drugs dispensed by licensed
physicians.

None of the drugs those Oregon physicians are prescribing is illegal.
They are drugs that are routinely used in the management of pain.

None of the physicians who prescribe these drugs is actively assisting
a patient's death. They are merely helping provide the means for those
few terminally ill patients who have made the highly personal decision
to permanently end their suffering.

None of those physicians is providing those drugs in amounts
sufficient to cause death to patients suffering from depression or
various forms of mental illness. In the 70 times Oregon's rigidly
defined law has been invoked since it was passed, there hasn't been a
single case of abuse.

You say your decision will in no way interfere with a doctor's right
to pain management, but you are wrong. Your decision effectively has
struck terror in the hearts of Oregon's doctors, as well. Any doctor
who knows he can lose his license to practice, should an already
terminally ill patient die while under his pain-management
supervision, may well be forced to err on the side of caution and
undermedicate the very patients who are in the most extreme need of
pain relief.

Mr. Attorney General, your administration seems to be promoting a
double standard when it comes to citizens' rights. Your decision
contradicts your stated belief that the unborn have the same rights as
all Americans to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It
clearly says that same baby whose right to life you sought to protect
in utero will be deprived of one of those inalienable rights, should
his or her "pursuit of happiness" ultimately include escaping
unendurable pain.

When your boss, President Bush, campaigned on keeping government out
of people's lives, was this the bottom line? That the government
should tell us, by threatening our doctors with sanctions, that it can
veto our right to make a decision we are better equipped than anyone
to make?

The one thing we don't need in the midst of what you have described as
a lengthy war on terrorism, Mr. Attorney General, is a law enforcement
officer who practices his own small acts of terror on those who are
most vulnerable.