Washington state had a record number of assisted suicide deaths.

Alex Schadenberg

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Washington state legalized assisted suicide in 2009 and continues to have significant yearly increases in deaths.

The recently released 2024 Washington State assisted suicide report indicates a significant increase in assisted suicide deaths as compared to the 2023 report and 2022 report. 

The 2024 report stated that there were 655 participants which is up by 20% from 545 in 2023 which was up by 21% from 452 in 2022. 

The 2024 report further indicated that 491 people were known to have died by assisted suicide which is up by 15% from 427 in 2023 which was up by almost 18% from 363 in 2022.

There may have been more assisted suicide deaths.

The 2024 report indicates that: 655 people participated, 641 participants are known to have died, 491 are known to have died after ingesting the lethal poison, 57 died without ingesting the lethal poison and the ingestion status was unknown for 93 people.

The Washington state report indicates that there were 93 participants whose death status or whose ingestion status was unknown. When the ingestion status is unknown, the person may have died by assisted suicide but no assisted suicide report was filed.

Some important information:

The Washington state data is imprecise concerning the length of time between ingesting the poison and death. The 2024 report indicates that 15% of the deaths took longer than 2 hours which is under represented since in 28% of the deaths the data is unknown.

The 2023 Oregon data indicated that the longest time of death was 137 hours and previous to 2023 the longest time of death was 104 hours.

The Washington state data is also imprecise concerning the length of time between the first request and the death by assisted suicide. The 2024 report states that 15% of the participants lived more than 120 days after first request. The law requires the participant, to be approved, to have a 6 month (180 day) prognosis and yet the data does not provide an option stating how many participants lived more than 180 days.

It is important to note that none of the 655 participants received a psychiatric evaluation.

The lack of oversight of the law.

A significant number of required reports were not filed, even though the 2024 report states: 

To receive the immunity protection provided by chapter 70.245 RCW, qualified medical providers and pharmacists must make a good-faith effort to file required documentation in a complete and timely manner. In 2022 and prior years, providers were required to submit forms by mail. In April 2023, legislation was passed that allows providers to submit data electronically

For instance, there were 655 participants but there were only 641 pharmacy dispensing forms, 592 attending medical provider compliance forms, 579 consulting medical compliance forms, 580 written request to end life forms and only 590 after death reporting forms.

Alex Raikin

In his article: How America abandoned it's assisted suicide safeguards, Alexander Raikin states:

Failure to submit this documentation isn’t just a statutory offense. Medical providers and pharmacists who fail to “make a good-faith effort to file required documentation in a complete and timely manner”, as Washington state law instructs, risk losing“immunity protection” for the criminal act of assisting someone’s suicide. Yet a Department of Health report found that physicians improperly reported compliance for a third of all assisted suicide deaths in the Evergreen State. Indeed, Washington is missing 515 compliance forms entirely for the period between 2009 to 2023, according to my calculations based on annual reports, and is also short of 293 “written request” documents that patients are required to sign attesting that they wish to die by suicide.

There were assisted suicide deaths that Washington state could charge medical providers with breaking the law, as they are not protected by the Death with Dignity act when they fail to file all of the reports.

Last year, the Washington state Department of Health announced that they would no longer publish an assisted suicide report, even though the report is legally required by law. Therefore the 2024 is the final report.

The Washington state Department of Health is aware of the lack of oversight of their assisted suicide law and would rather hide the data than publish the data and have researchers point out the flaws. Washington state is not the only violator of the reporting requirements. New Mexico has never published an assisted suicide report.

Further to that, the Oregon reports also clearly show how there is no effective oversight of the law. People are being killed and for many of them, we have no idea how they died or even if the basic requirements of the law were followed.