The Oregon Death with Dignity Act.

Just over twenty years ago, on November 8, 1994, Oregon became the first state to decriminalize “physician assisted suicide.” On that day, by a margin of 51 to 49 percent, voters passed the Oregon Death with Dignity Act, a ballot initiative now codified at ORS 127.800 127.897. The Death with Dignity Act permits state licensed, Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) registered physicians and pharmacies, to prescribe and dispense Schedule II and lower controlled substances to competent, terminally ill, adult patients seeking to hasten an impending death in narrowly defined circumstances. See, e.g., ORS 127.815 (responsibilities of the attending physician). I was a lead author of the Oregon Death With Dignity Act. I was also the Eli Stutsman lead political and legal strategist during the 1994 campaign to pass the law, and again during the 1997 campaign to prevent its legislatively inspired repeal. I also represented the law’s chief petitioners during the first round of federal court litigation (1995-1997), and a physician and a pharmacist during the second round of federal court litigation (20022006). Key to understanding the lens through which I view end of life issues is knowing that I have two physicians in my family (both now deceased) and, as a new lawyer, I worked for a firm defending physicians. This exposure has provided me with valuable perspective, particularly with respect to the all important medical standard of care. More important, however, was the time I spent as an undergraduate student in religious studies, an experience that informs my thinking on ethical issues as much or more than does being a lawyer. And key to understanding the Oregon Death with Dignity Act is knowing that the law has never been as controversial, as many may have first assumed. Four days before its passage, 20 years ago, Pulitzer Prize winning columnist Ellen Goodman quoted me as saying, “We haven’t tried to change the way people die or the way people ask for help. We have attempted to bring something out of the dark and into the light and at the same time provide safeguards.” Ellen Goodman, “Gentle Into the Night,” The Baltimore Sun, November 4, 1994. My point then was that dying patients were already hastening their deaths by accumulating and ingesting prescription drugs, occasionally with assistance from their physicians, and we had codified that covert practice into a ballot initiative. We had also proposed a medical standard of care, along with sensible public policy limits, that we termed “safeguards.” Although I did not view the narrowly written Oregon Death with Dignity Act as controversial, controversy was plentiful in the early 1990s. The so-called “right to die” movement was riding a fresh wave of support. By 1990, Dr. Jack Kevorkian was already notoriously famous when Janet Adkins left her comfortable southwest Portland home and traveled to Michigan to hasten her death in Dr. Kevorkian’s Volkswagon bus. The next year, 1991, Derek Humphry, a prominent advocate working and living in the Eugene area, published his book, “Final Exit,” a how-to manual for those seeking to hasten death. It went straight to the top of The New York Times bestseller list. That same year, Washington voters defeated Initiative 119, a citizens’ initiative that would have permitted euthanasia and lethal injection. The following year, 1992, California voters defeated Proposition 162, another similar proposal that would have permitted The Oregon Death With Dig nity Act Four Challenges that ensured the law’s suCCess