This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

More people than ever accessed end-of-life drugs and used them in the year 2020.

So says the Oregonian newspaper in a story yesterday that appeared under this headline:

Why more Oregonians took their lives through Death with Dignity in 2020 than any other year

The story started this way:

“Most people struggling through the final stages of a terminal illness have one choice:  Wait for the disease to play out and kill them, no matter how gruesome or painful.

“For more than two decades, Oregonians have been able to choose a different path.

“Beginning in 1998, the Death with Dignity Act has allowed Oregonians who meet certain conditions to receive prescription medications to help them end their life.  From its inception through 2020, 2,895 people have used the act to get prescriptions, and 1,905 have used those drugs to die.

“Last year, a record 370 people received prescriptions under the Death with Dignity Act, according to data compiled by the Oregon Health Authority, up 25 per cent from 2019.  Of those, 245 died by ingesting prescribed medications, an increase of 28 per cent from the previous year.”

All of this recalled a tough period for me and my firm, CFM Strategic Communications. 

In 1994, we ran the first campaign against an assisted suicide initiative.  But we lost, by a 51 to 49 per cent vote in favor of installing a new law in Oregon.

It stood then as the only assisted suicide law among the 50 states, though since 1994, nine other states have joined the ranks of those permitting the practice. 

Back in 1994, given the controversial and emotional character of the new law, the Oregon Legislature, in an almost-unprecedented decision voted to send the law back out to the people for another vote.  My firm was not involved in the campaign this time.

It passed by a resounding 60 to 40 per cent margin.

What that meant then – and what the new statistics mean today – is that Oregonians are decidedly more comfortable with what has come to be labeled “death with dignity.”

Here is how the Oregonian put it, using words from one of its sources:

“For over 20 years, Oregonian’s Death with Dignity Act has not only provided those facing a terminal illness the ability to avoid unnecessary suffering.  It has also opened the door to more open and honest conversations about each of our wishes at the end of life.

“The result has been increased use of hospice services, better symptom management and a culture that places value on the wishes of dying individuals.”

So, why has the number of those using assisted suicide spiked upward in 2020?

It’s part of a change in the law.

Generally, people who request end-of-life medications must wait 15 days between the first oral request and the second, but new rules allow people with less than 15 days to live to be exempted from that rule.  Also, people with less than 48 hours to live no longer must wait 48 hours between their written request and the writing of the actual prescription.  A doctor must officially confirm the patient’s death is imminent if he or she does not complete the waiting periods.

“In 2020, there were 73 more prescriptions written than in 2019,” according to the agency in charge of charting use of the law, the Oregon Health Authority. “There were also 75 patients who were granted exemptions from the waiting periods.”

Those are patients who presumably wouldn’t have qualified for assisted suicide before 2020.

So, in the last 25 years so, have I changed my view of assisted suicide?  Good question.  I am tempted to say “yes” and “no.”

The “yes” is that there clearly are cases where an individual should be in charge of their own life and when it should end, given huge and untreatable diseases that rack the body and the mind.

In the early years of the new law in Oregon, a critical component was that the individual had to be able to take and ingest pills on their own, without help from anyone else.  That isstill be the case, but the waiting periods, as described above, have changed.

My “no” answer is that it always is very difficult to pass a law directing personal behavior when the law applies to everyone and to every circumstance.  Better, if it were possible, to design individual specifics to fit individual circumstances.  Of course, it’s not.

So, overall and on balance, I end up being relatively comfortable with Oregon’s law, which does not give wholesale permission for assisted suicide, but regulates the process effectively.  The last 25 years have proved that point.