Remember back in 2008 when we went through the intense and emotional campaign regarding the state’s aid-in-dying initiative, and the law’s subsequent approval by voters? Over the years, the low number of people making use of the law have helped ease concerns by opponents that somehow the law would be misused by suicidal people, or abused by people wanting to get rid of the elderly and vulnerable.
A total of 255 terminally ill adults have received medication since the law went into effect in 2009, according to the Department of Health.
In its annual report on the law, the agency this week reported that in 2011, 70 people died after requesting and taking a lethal prescription. The department said 103 people requested and received the doses. Of those people, 94 are known to have died, state officials said, including the 70 who died after taking the medication, the Associated Press reported. The 103 prescriptions were written by 80 different physicians and dispensed by 46 different pharmacists. Those who died were between the ages of 41 and 101 and most had cancer.
Meanwhile, in contrast, the number of people with non-terminal illnesses dying from an overdose of prescription pain medication continues to grow in Washington, according to a 2010 state Health Department report. From 2003 to 2008, the state death rate increased 90 percent, the agency reported. In 2007, 447 people died; in 2008 it was 505. It’s impossible to know how many overdoses might actually be suicides.
(Nationally, more than 36,000 people died from drug overdoses in 2008, and most of these deaths were caused by prescription drugs, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.)
The idea of having to request a “lethal dose” under the Death with Dignity law loses some meaning when its apparent that any given painkiller prescription will fit the bill. Especially if it is mixed with alcohol or other drugs, which is the case in one-half of the overdose deaths, according to the CDC.
In response to the overdose deaths, Washington in 2010 passed the nation’s toughest regulations regarding pain medicine prescription. It’s so strict critics are concerned that patients may not get the medication they need.
While we don’t need another initiative or law, what we do need is an intense campaign and discussion to educate people about the danger of prescription drugs, which people apparently still believe are “safer” than illegal drugs. (Of course, when the prescription isn’t yours, they are illegal drugs.) Yet they kill more people than heroin, crack and meth overdoses combined.
Prescription drugs need demonizing.
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