JUDGE TO RULE ON STATE'S SUICIDE LAW

PORTLAND - The legal showdown between Attorney General John Ashcroft and
the state of Oregon over the nation's only physician-assisted suicide law
goes back to court Friday, and a judge will decide whether to uphold the
state law that was twice approved by voters.

Ashcroft issued a directive on Nov. 6 that would have prohibited doctors
from prescribing a lethal dose of drugs to terminally ill patients.

U.S. District Judge Robert Jones, however, blocked Ashcroft with a
temporary restraining order on Nov. 8. The judge later criticized the
Justice Department for waiting nearly five months to issue the directive
after staff attorneys recommended it to Ashcroft.

Following Friday's hearing, Jones will consider how to resolve the conflict
between federal drug regulations and the long-recognized responsibility of
states to regulate medical practice. He has promised to rule within 30 days
of the hearing.

"The main issue is the scope of the federal Controlled Substances Act and
who is empowered to determine what constitutes a legitimate medical
practice - is it up to the individual states or is it something the federal
government can mandate?" said Kathryn Tucker, legal director for Compassion
in Dying, a Seattle-based group that supports physician-assisted suicide.

First passed in 1994 and affirmed three years later, the law allows
patients with six months to live or fewer to ask a doctor to prescribe a
lethal combination of drugs. The patient must choose to die voluntarily,
and must be able to physically take the pills without any help.

At least 91 people have used the law to end their lives, according to an
article published in the New England Journal of Medicine last month.

Ashcroft said in his Nov. 6 order that helping a terminally ill patient
commit suicide is not a legitimate medical practice, which is a requirement
to prescribe and dispense federally controlled drugs.

The state immediately went to court to challenge Ashcroft's move.

Steve Bushong, an Oregon assistant attorney general, argued that Ashcroft
overstepped his authority by interfering with a carefully considered
medical practice that applies only to a select group of people who use the
law as a last resort.

In a recent court filing, Bushong said that even if Ashcroft did have the
authority, he did not follow proper procedure for overriding a state law
because it was issued without any public comment or debate, unlike the
years of public debate that preceded approval of the Oregon law.

"The directive presumes that Congress intended to give the Attorney General
authority to decide - as a matter of federal law - sensitive public policy
issues like the 'legitimacy' of physician assistance in hastening death,"
Bushong said, a presumption he called "fundamentally flawed."

Bushong also said U.S. Supreme Court cases consistently have favored the
right of states to enact laws that do not violate the U.S. Constitution.

Recent cases, in fact, indicate the Supreme Court "is more likely to expand
the sovereign rights of states to legislate free of federal interference,"
Bushong said.

But Craig Casey, the assistant U.S. attorney representing Ashcroft,
repeated the government's argument that Ashcroft has the power to interpret
the federal Controlled Substances Act because the federal government has a
national interest in enforcing drug laws uniformly and protecting public
health.

"Nothing in the CSA, its legislative history, or any implementing
regulation supports" the state claim that Congress authorized doctors to
make the final decision to assist dying patients, Casey said.

The Ashcroft directive reversed a 1998 opinion by then-Attorney General
Janet Reno, who concluded that the Oregon law did not conflict with the
federal Controlled Substances Act.