RENO: DEA CAN'T ACT ON SUICIDE LAW

Oregon doctors' drug licenses won't be pulled if they follow the rules, she
says. Legislators aim to overrule her.

WASHINGTON - Attorney General Janet Reno ruled Friday that federal drug
agents cannot move against doctors who help terminally ill patients die
under Oregon's landmark death-with-dignity law. Within hours, a bill to
overrule her was introduced in Congress.

Already rebuffed by the Supreme Court, opponents of physician-assisted
suicide said they would turn to legislation. House Judiciary Committee
Chairman Henry Hyde, R-Ill., joined by Rep. James L. Oberstar, D-Minn.,
sponsored the first bill to explicitly ban drugs for assisted suicide.

Advocates of Oregon's law, the first of its kind in the nation, hailed
Reno's ruling as clearing the way for political debate in the 50 states on
the morality and ethics of the issue.

But few predicted an immediate surge in doctor-aided deaths. Although
Oregon's law took effect in October, only three terminally ill Oregonians -
including a cancer-stricken grandmother in her 80s - have killed themselves
with lethal prescriptions.

And Reno warned that doctors in states with no assisted-suicide law or even
those in Oregon who ignore the law's safeguards could face federal
penalties.

President Clinton signed a law last year barring federal assistance for the
practice.

The Oregon law requires two doctors to agree that the patient has less than
six months to live, is competent and has made a voluntary decision. Two
other witnesses must agree that the request is voluntary.

Last November, without consulting the Justice Department, one of Reno's
subordinates, Drug Enforcement Administration chief Thomas Constantine,
told Congress his agents could use the federal Controlled Substances Act to
arrest doctors who participated or revoke their DEA drug licenses.

But Reno concluded that he law was designed to curb drug trafficking and
abuse of stimulants, depressants and hallucinogens.

"There is no evidence the Congress, in the Controlled Substances Act,
intended to assign DEA the novel role of resolving (what the Supreme Court
last year called) the 'earnest and profound debate about the morality,
legality and practicality of physician-assisted suicide,'" Reno wrote Hyde.

Checked-by: (Joel W. Johnson)