X-Message-Number: 9858
Date: Fri, 05 Jun 1998 17:06:36 -0700
From: David Brandt-Erichsen <>
Subject: still more on Oregon

(June 05/98 5:40 PM Eastern - abridged)
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               RENO WON'T BLOCK OREGON'S ASSISTED-SUICIDE LAW
                           By MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN

   WASHINGTON (AP) -- 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 James L. Oberstar, D-Minn.,
   sponsored the first bill to explicitly ban drugs for assisted suicide.

   Only one other state is even near following Oregon's lead -- a
   Michigan group claims to have gathered enough signatures to put the
   issue on that state's ballot.

   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.

   But Reno concluded the 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 Rep. Hyde.

   "There is no evidence that Congress, in the CSA, intended to displace
   the states as the primary regulators of the medical profession, or to
   override a state's determination as to what constitutes legitimate
   medical practice."

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