DRUG USED IN SUICIDE SCARCE, DOCTOR SAYS

SALEM, Ore. - Patients allowed to obtain prescriptions to end their lives
under Oregon's suicide law may still not be able get the drugs, doctors say.

A statewide shortage of seconal, a barbiturate key to the drug cocktail,
means those prescriptions can't be filled.

Eli Lilly, maker of the drug, did not respond to requests for information
Friday. But Salem oncologist Dr. Peter Rasmussen, who has assisted a number
of patients using the law, said he wonders whether some political strings
are being pulled to keep the drug out of Oregon.

Oregon's assisted-suicide law has been under attack since it was passed by
voters in 1994. About 70 terminally ill patients have used the law to end
their lives.

On Tuesday, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft issued a directive to the
Drug Enforcement Agency that said doctors prescribing federally controlled
drugs to end patients' lives could lose their prescription licenses.

Thursday, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order keeping the
law in effect until Nov. 20. Meanwhile, Rasmussen said, doctors are trying
to find the drug elsewhere in the country.

"There's a scramble," he said. "But this is a scramble on a very small
scale. There are not a lot of patients who use assisted suicide. I don't
have a lot of patients who are pounding down the door waiting for their drugs."