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Ashcroft's meddling
When right to die is not a federal case

The Daytona Beach News Journal | Last update: 01 June 2004

When a federal appeals court ruled on Oregon's assisted suicide law last week, the general impression might have been that a federal court was legalizing, if not endorsing, assisted suicide. That wasn't the case. "To be perfectly clear," the court said, "we take no position on the merits or morality of physician-assisted suicide. We express no opinion on whether the practice is inconsistent with the public interest or constitutes illegitimate medical care. This case is simply about who gets to decide."

Attorney General John Ashcroft thought he did. Correcting him, the court said he did not. Oregon voters do.

In 1994, Oregon passed a ballot initiative legalizing assisted suicide. State legislators then drafted the nation's only law making assisted suicide permissible in limited and strictly supervised circumstances. Terminally ill adults who are likely to die within six months may request a lethal injection from a physician. The physician prescribes the drug but may not administer it and is shielded from liability. Since 1997, about 30 people a year have used the law to end their lives.

The Bush administration is opposed to assisted suicide, but Ashcroft more actively so. In 1997, when he was a Missouri senator, he asked then-Attorney General Janet Reno to invalidate the Oregon law. Reno refused. When he took over the post in 2001, his directive making doctors and pharmacists liable for aiding in suicides was among his first actions.

Officially, however, Ashcroft, like the administration he represents, is also an advocate of states' rights. The Oregon law posed a challenge. As a matter of states' rights, he had to stay out of it. As a matter of ideology, he couldn't possibly. Ashcroft looked for a way of interfering and found it in the Controlled Substance Act of 1970 -- a federal law devised to help fight the so-called war on drugs President Nixon launched the year before. The act forbids doctors from prescribing controlled substances without a federal registration and requires prescriptions to be issued only "for a legitimate medical purpose."

But the act doesn't define medicine. It is aimed at battling illegal drugs and at keeping doctors from abetting individuals' addictions. Nor does the act give the attorney general the authority to define medicine or arbitrarily single out medical practices for disapproval. Ashcroft's directive forbidding assisted suicide in Oregon essentially takes it on itself to define for the state what legitimate and illegitimate medicine is. The court was right to invalidate the directive.

Yet, the court left the door open for Congress to rewrite the act and give the attorney general that authority. So far, Congress has shown no interest in doing so for good reason: Oregon's law was no legislative whim but a voter-approved measure regarding one of the most difficult decisions an individual can make. It strikes the right balance between freedom of choice and government oversight. Federal intervention would politicize what is essentially a local, private decision.

[zombienote: And that is why this story is on Marijuana.com. The Right to Die with Dignity and the right to use medical marijuana are both a person's sovereign choice and the intrusion of any government - or singular government figurehead like Ashcroft - into it is intolerable and a recipe for suffering and disaster. Those who have followed the US Government's abysmal record of harrassing, ruining and killing marijuana smokers know they don't care what suffering or disaster they bring upon people in the pursuit of this Anti-American ideological agenda.]


Under Ashcroft, however, the Justice Department has stopped making distinctions between public interest and private choice just as it has stopped making distinctions between states' rights and federal authority. It's not clear when federal authority is invoked to overrule local rights, but ideological concerns have been a fairly reliable guide. Oregon's assisted suicide law aside, Ashcroft has used his authority to override local laws permitting the medical use of marijuana or to override local federal prosecutors' opposition to seeking the death penalty. Such finicky application of the Justice Department's power is, at best, an abuse of the department's authority that the president has encouraged and Congress has permitted. One court case going in the opposite direction hasn't ended the trend, but only highlighted a serious problem of federal overreach.

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Alien Space Signal

There's no money for your issue so long as we're squandering $50 billion a year on the DrugWar. Ben Masel

Fear became the ultimate tool of this government - V.

 

Hiz Highness

The extreme right wing has never made any d*mn sense. They don't want people to have abortions because they value life soooo much. They don't want people to have doctor assisted suicides because the love life soooo much. But they're the first people to support the death penalty. Why won't these nuts just let people live their lives as they chose, and die as they chose? Can they please just keep their crazy ideas of god and religion out of our laws? Does the rest of America have to suffer because our extremist leaders want to inflict their deranged value system on us?

It's time for this administration to go. It is inept, dishonest, meddling, and not in tune with the wants or needs of the American people. Stand up in November and make your voice heard. Ashcroft must go, and with him the rest of the administration.

-HH

StewScum

Pretty soon Ashcroft is going to be wiping my a** too, because God forbid i have control of it. Now he's taking away a sick persons right to die in peace. I tell you what, I'd rather choose to pass away peacefully then either be trapped in a coma for 30 years and then die, or die an agonizing death for 3 years from a uncontrollable cancer. Who is the goverment to tell us what we can do with our own life. Bush wants to stop gay marrages, because it isn't sacred, but what the hell is more sacred than our own lives.

So this goes out to Ashcroft, I'll be bending over waiting for you with a stinky suprise buddy, i hope you brought 3 ply.

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Life is like a pot of stew, if you don't stir it up every once and a while, all the scum rises to the top -Still Life with Woodpecker by Tom Robbins.

^_^truth

John Aschoft has no right to engage in this activity. As we speak I will start looking for a loophole in the government that allows the public to impeach the attoney general and end this hoi poli. Their must be away to stop him.


Heck while I am ranting how about the U.S. government actually asking the public what they want to do about this. The largest flaw of the U.S. government is that the public does not engage in it's decisions, the public votes for repersentives; how about actually trusting the people for once and let us vote on things (no more congress=no more corruption=no more b$).

Niteshift

Ashcroft looked for a way of interfering and found it in the Controlled Substance Act of 1970 -- a federal law devised to help fight the so-called war on drugs President Nixon launched the year before.

Since this was put into bold print, I couldn't help but notice and point out the error.

The Act was passed in 1970. Nixon used the phrase "war on drugs" for the first time June 17, 1971.

That is the year AFTER the act was passed, NOT the year before. So the assertion of the author, that the act was "devised to help fight the so-called war on drugs President Nixon launched the year before" is INCORRECT. The act existed BEFORE the "war" was declared.

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A burning desire for social justice is never a substitute for knowing what you're talking about. -Thomas Sowell

Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is muzzle flash.