For immediate release: For more information:
Wednesday, May 26, 2004 Laura Echevarria (202)626-8825; mediarelations@nrlc.org
FEDERAL APPEALS COURT SAYS U.S. MUST FACILITATE SUICIDE WITH FEDERALLY CONTROLLED DRUGS; SUPREME COURT LIKELY TO HAVE LAST WORD
Today, a panel of the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that the federal government must facilitate assisted suicide in Oregon by authorizing the use of federally controlled narcotics and other dangerous drugs to kill patients, striking down a ruling that such misuse of federally controlled drugs violates federal law. An appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court is likely.
Burke Balch, J.D., director of the National Right to Life Committee's Robert Powell Center for Medical Ethics, commented, "The American people do not want their federal government to facilitate euthanasia. The 9th Circuit majority’s odd decision is that state law controls federal law. We are confident that the U.S. Supreme Court, on appeal, will ultimately uphold the position of Attorney General Ashcroft and the Bush Administration that Federally controlled drugs should be used to cure and relieve pain, not to kill.”
The use of narcotics and other dangerous drugs is generally prohibited by federal law except when a doctor prescribes them for a “legitimate medical purpose.” On November 5, 1997, then-Drug Enforcement Administrator Thomas Constantine had announced that since assisting suicide is not "a legitimate medical purpose[,] . . . prescribing a controlled substance with the intent of assisting a suicide" violates federal law.
However, on June 5, 1998, Clinton Administration Attorney General Janet Reno partially overruled Constantine’s decision. She agreed that "adverse action" might be warranted "where a physician assists in a suicide in a state that has not authorized the practice under any conditions, or where a physician fails to comply with state procedures in doing so.” Nevertheless, she said federally controlled drugs could be prescribed to kill patients when legal under state law. Oregon is the only state whose law specifically authorizes lethal prescriptions.
On November 6, 2001, Attorney General Ashcroft issued a decision reversing Reno and reinstating the prior uniform federal policy against the prescription of federally controlled drugs to kill patients. However, this policy never took effect, because of court orders by a federal district court, now upheld 2-1 by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
The National Right to Life Committee is the nation's largest pro-life group with affiliates in all 50 states and over 3,000 chapters nationwide. National Right to Life works through legislation and education to protect those lives threatened by abortion, infanticide and euthanasia.
WHY THE ATTORNEY GENERAL’S RULING PREVENTING USE OF FEDERALLY CONTROLLED DRUGS TO ASSIST SUICIDE DOESN’T VIOLATE STATES’ RIGHTS
1. The federal government and the states both have authority (concurrent jurisdiction) over dangerous drugs and other controlled substances. In any given state, a use of a drug might be:
1) against both federal and state law
2) against neither federal nor state law
3) against state but not federal law
4) against federal but not state law
Case (4) now applies in Oregon to the use of federally controlled drugs to assist suicide.
2. It does not violate federal authority for a state to prohibit something federal law may not prohibit; it happens all the time. E.g., laws against robbery or violations of zoning ordinances.
In the same way, it does not violate state authority for federal law to prohibit something state law may not prohibit: e.g., evasion of federal taxes; racial discrimination in public accommodations (Civil Rights Act of 1964).
3. Under Attorney General Ashcroft’s ruling, use of federally controlled drugs to assist suicide in Oregon simply violates federal law without violating state law. Oregon’s law has not been invalidated, superseded, or pre-empted. It simply is the case that federally controlled drugs may no longer be used to facilitate assisting suicide in Oregon.
4. In 1984, Congress amended the Controlled Substances Act specifically to authorize the Justice Department to revoke doctors’ registrations to prescribe federally controlled drugs when the doctors did not violate state law. As the Senate Report on the amendments explained, the amendments were deemed necessary because, under the then-current CSA, "the Attorney General must presently grant a practitioner's registration application unless his State license has been revoked or he has been convicted of a felony drug offense, even though such action may clearly be contrary to the public interest."[i]
To read the decision:
http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/ca9/newopinions.nsf/F63C3857EBE8263588256E9F007C
Endnotes