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.

Eileen Mihich: It was too easy to fraudulently get assisted suicide drugs.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

I first published an article about the tragic death of Eileen Mihich on December 17, 2025. Aging with Dignity uncovered the story of Eileen Mihich who was a lonely 31 year-old woman who fraudulently received a lethal assisted suicide poison cocktail even though she:

• She suffered from serious mental illness
• She was not a Washington resident
• No doctor verified if she was terminally ill
• No waiting period was enforced

On February 4, 2026; The Atlantic published an article by Elizabeth Bruenig about the death of Eileen Mihich. This story provides information about the death of Eileen Mihich and how she obtained the poison assisted suicide drugs. Bruenig states that:

Her case should disturb both advocates and opponents of medically assisted suicide.

Bruenig explains the death scene:

The four-star Hotel deLuxe in Portland, Oregon, features a soaring lobby with a gilded ceiling that drips with chandeliers. Eileen Mihich, a 31-year-old woman from nearby Beaverton, checked in on the afternoon of March 6, 2025. Two days later, a hotel employee named Stephen Jones noticed that Mihich had failed to check out at the appointed time and went to her eighth-floor room to investigate. No one answered, and the room was silent behind the door, so he let himself in. He found Mihich dead on the bed, with purpling skin. Jones immediately called the police, who noted the empty pill bottles at Mihich’s bedside, along with a pamphlet: “Step-by-Step Instructions for Taking Aid in Dying Medications.”

Bruenig statess that Mihich had complained about a mysterious abdominal pain and had spoken about assisted suicide but nearly a year after her death, family members are still investigating how Muhich actually obtained an assisted suicide poison drug cocktail to die.

After Mihich died, the investigation indicated that she had no signs of an illness but they had pharmacy receipts for prescription drugs commonly used to end the lives of patients by assisted suicide.

The question was - how did Eileen Mihich obtain a poison drug cocktail used for assisted suicide? Bruenig writes:

For both advocates and opponents of this medically and culturally sanctioned form of suicide, Mihich’s story is a nightmare.

Bruinig speaks to members of Mihich's family.

Torina suspects that her niece would still be alive had it been just a little harder for her to secure lethal medication. “She didn’t really want to die, but she felt that she was powerless to create a life worth living. She mentioned that to me on more than one occasion,” Torina told me. Studies show that even minor barriers to suicide, such as selling pills in blister packs and limiting the amount of analgesics that can be sold over the counter, may deter people from ending their life, perhaps because they introduce delays into what can be a rash act. Shortly before her death, Mihich had ordered eye shadow online, which arrived after she was gone. “She was showing signs that she did want to live,” Torina said.

Mihich lived with long-term mental illness.

Mihich had been mentally ill for a long time, her relatives said, and she had needed many things that life did not supply her. An only child of negligent parents, Mihich identified with the Roald Dahl character Matilda, a precocious schoolgirl who learns to fend for herself against sometimes cruel adults. Mihich’s parents had screaming fights in front of her, Sarah and Torina recalled, and Mihich alleged that her father, who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, had raped her when she was a teenager. (Mihich did not pursue the allegations in court, and her father did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Her mother declined to comment.)

After bouncing from foster home to foster home, Mihich was 15 when she fled her last foster parent and arrived on Torina’s doorstep, asking to be taken in. Torina obliged. Mihich’s psychiatrist eventually diagnosed her with bipolar disorder and borderline-personality disorder, the symptoms of which were so severe that she struggled to hold down a job or a home...

Further to that Mihich didn't take care of herself, nor did she receive good care

Mihich’s relatives said that she often refused to take the medication prescribed to treat her bipolar disorder, and that she nursed semi-delusional beliefs about her capacity to heal herself. She lived on Social Security Disability Insurance and was occasionally homeless. Mihich sometimes told her family about mysterious pains she felt in her pelvic area...

...All the while, Mihich repeatedly told her family that her pain was so great, she did not want to live. “She would tell me often that she couldn’t do it anymore,” Torina said. “She was too traumatized and broken” to keep on living.

The family then learned that Mihich's suicide drugs were the same poison drug cocktail used for assisted suicide. Bruenig wrote:

Once her toxicology report came back, they also knew which medications she had used to kill herself. Many of the drugs prescribed for medical assistance in dying are not commonly thought of as vulnerable to abuse. But when death is a possibility, minor errors can have catastrophic consequences.

Bruenig explains how Mihich obtained the lethal poison cocktail.

To understand just how Mihich had secured these medications, Sarah turned to Mihich’s phone. Reviewing her incoming and outgoing calls in the days leading up to her death, Sarah found that Mihich had been in touch with multiple hospice coordinators and loan agencies, as well as a Washington State pharmacist who runs a compounding pharmacy out of a gift shop. Posing as a California family-practice physician under an assumed name, Mihich requested a prescription order form over email, then completed the paperwork and emailed it back—a method of submitting prescriptions that is illegal in Washington and elsewhere, in most cases. She then asked that the pharmacist coordinate via text with her “patient,” and gave her own phone number.

Ultimately Mihich was able to carry out her fraud with publicly available information and relative ease. Unlike conventional pharmacies, which sell only FDA-approved pharmaceuticals, compounding pharmacies are able to sell customized formulations that are not FDA tested and approved.

Therefore Mihich submitted the prescription for the poison drug cocktail by claiming to be a California physician. The pharmacy didn't check the credentials of the physician, but rather filled the prescription which enabled Mihich to die by lethal drug poison suicide.

Bruenig explains that Eileen Mihich's cousins submitted a police report, in May 2025 in order to find out how the pharmacy could have filled this fraudulent poison prescription.

The story explains that Mihich's had considered suicide methods. Mihich had considered suicide by not eating and drinking and she had also considered using a gun. They believe that Mihich investigated death by assisted suicide drugs based on an aversion to possible suffering. Assisted suicide is not necessarily pain free.

The next question is how did she find out about how assisted suicide. Bruenig writes:

What we do know is that Mihich found a network of support in her pursuit of a medically assisted death. Her relatives discovered a message on her phone left by a representative of a naturopathic health company called Temple Natural Health, who explained that she had found “a way forward” after discussing Mihich’s case with a hospice-care organization called A Sacred Passing. The message did not include details, and the company did not respond to requests for comment. A representative of A Sacred Passing confirmed that the organization had responded to Mihich’s request for help in seeking medical assistance in dying with “a list of things to do” to get legal medical support—“the ways to reach out and locations to call.” The representative added that she stayed on the phone with Mihich because she sensed that the caller was struggling and needed someone to talk to, but that she didn’t think Mihich would qualify for a medically assisted death.

After publishing the video of Eileen Mihich's story, a representative from Sacred Passing contacted the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition and assured us that they did not facilitate the death of Eileen Mihich.

In response to the legal loopholes that resulted in Mihich's death, family members contacted Aging with Dignity a nonprofit that advocates against the practice and offers resources to people facing end-of-life problems. This group has worked with Sarah and Torina to create a video about Mihich that helps share her story. (Link to the video about Eileen Mihich).

Bruenig explains the concern:

Mihich’s method of suicide was clearly illegal in Oregon, Washington, and elsewhere in the United States, where medical assistance in death is available only to adult patients who are terminally ill, have six months or less to live, and are mentally capable of making their own health-care decisions. But her ability to access fatal drugs is concerning, as the spread of laws allowing medical assistance in dying makes it likely that incidents like this will happen again.

Bruenig discusses issues related to assisted suicide for mental illness, as is already legal in the Netherlands and Belgium and is scheduled to begin in Canada in March 2027.

Bruenig ends her article by stating that Americans may take comfort that Mihich's suicide death is technically illegal in every state that has legalized assisted suicide, but she questions whether this story is a sign that the current laws are not working and that, once legal, it is impossible to keep assisted suicide narrow in scope. She then states:

For some, Mihich’s story offers a salient lesson about the importance of greater oversight and tighter regulation of lethal drugs. Others may see in Mihich’s suicide a glimpse of things to come.

Previous story about Eileen Mihich's death:

• Eileen fraudulently died by assisted suicide in Washington State (Read).

The Myth of a Safe Assisted Suicide Regime.

Alexander Raikin

Alexander Raikin was published by the Wall Street Journal on December 23, 2025 in response to a December 17 letter by Corinne Carey celebrating New York Governor Hochul's decision to sign the New York assisted suicide bill into law. 

Raikin is a visiting fellow in Bioethics at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, who has been published by multiple journals and news agencies. Raikin writes.

How humane is assisted suicide? Corinne Carey, from the advocacy group Compassion & Choices, suggests the answer is very (Letters, Dec. 17). New York’s bill places the decision only with a mentally competent patient, and “safeguards are in place to ensure that those who don’t qualify—say, those with eating disorders or psychiatric conditions—couldn’t receive it.”

No need to fear? Not quite.

That’s the same promise Compassion & Choices made in other states before legalization. Three years ago, the organization’s then chief legal advocacy officer—recently promoted to CEO—promised that Colorado’s legislation “does not and was never intended to apply to a person whose only diagnosis is anorexia nervosa.”

But physicians have simply stopped following the law. In at least Oregon, California and Colorado, patients with eating disorders have already qualified and died through assisted suicide. Despite the claim that this is illegal, in Colorado—the sole state to report “malnutrition” as a qualifying illness for assisted suicide—at least 30 MAID deaths between 2017 to 2024 were due to “severe protein calorie malnutrition.” The main lobby group for assisted suicide claims it is illegal to prescribe the “treatment” for eating disorders, and in response, the number of assisted suicides for eating disorders has increased nationwide.

Unfortunately, this follows a larger trend. A Washington state health department report in 2022 found that a third of all relevant physicians in the state failed to submit legally mandated compliance forms for assisted suicide. The result: The state looked hard at the practice, at the assisted-suicide physicians blatantly failing to follow the most minimal of safeguards, and then decided this year to discontinue “suspend” its monitoring program for the procedure.

Previous articles by Alexander Raikin. (Articles Link).

Eileen fraudulently died by assisted suicide in Washington State.

Eileen Mihich was battling serious mental distress. But Washington state’s assisted-suicide regime gave her lethal assisted suicide drugs instead of care and support, even though she did not qualify under the law.

Aging with Dignity has uncovered the story of Eileen Mihich who was a lonely 31 year-old woman who fraudulently received a lethal assisted suicide poison cocktail even though she:

 

• She suffered from serious mental illness
• She was not a Washington resident
• No doctor verified she was terminally ill
• No waiting period was enforced

Eileen's story proves that there is no real oversight of the law. Eileen forged documents by claiming that she was a doctor and by claiming that she had stage 4 cancer.

 

The story of Eileen Mihich shows us how little oversight exists in the assisted suicide law. It also asks the big question, how did Eileen receive the lethal poison that killed her?

People Magazine article sells couple assisted suicide death porn.

Their daughter was constantly on the phone, speaking to hospice coordinators and doctors trying to get her dad qualified for hospice and MAID.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

An exclusive article written by Vanessa Etienne and published by People Magazine on October 8, 2025 reads like an assisted suicide lobby article that was paid for to sell couple suicide by making a couple killing part of a "love" story. This story feels like death porn.

Further to that the death story features a daughter who becomes intimately involved with arranging the assisted suicide deaths of her parents. From the article:

Corinne Gregory Sharpe always had a strong relationship with her parents, Eva and Druse Neumann. “We all were close and tight-knit,” the private professional chef from Port Ludlow, Washington, says. But in 2021, she helped both of them end their own lives with medical aid in dying — a journey she calls a “painful paradox.”

Now, four years after their deaths, the 61-year-old is opening up exclusively to PEOPLE about their last moments together and why she advocated for them to die on their own terms.

Eva and Druse Newmann died by assisted suicide in Washington state, where assisted suicide was legalized in 2009 after the law passed in a state voter initiative.

The story suggests that Eva qualified for assisted suicide but Druse didn't want to be left-alone after her death. From the article:

Meanwhile, Eva’s decision to die left Druse distraught. “I had a very interesting, serious heart-to-heart conversation with him one evening after my mom had gone to bed,” Corinne shares. “And he was just panicked like, ‘What happens to me if she goes first?’ That's always been a concern of his. He couldn't see a scenario where he would want to continue if mom was gone.”

“He's always been afraid of dying. But I think he was more afraid of being left alone,” she explains. “He was like, ‘Well, if she's gonna go and I have the option to go at the same time, then I'm getting on that horse.’ So I was like, look, we'll figure something out.”

In other words, Eva seems to qualify, under the law, to die by assisted suicide but Druse did not. So Corinne made it her goal to get Druse to qualify to be killed. The story states:

From that point, Corinne was constantly on the phone, speaking to hospice coordinators and doctors trying to get her dad qualified for hospice and MAID. She admits it was “surreal” to be essentially advocating for her own father’s death. By mid-June, Druse was successfully qualified based on his history of mini-strokes.

Corinne says it was “a race” to get her dad qualified, and the justification from doctors came down to the strong possibility of her father suffering a stroke that wouldn’t kill him, but would leave him incapacitated.

After receiving the lethal poison for her parents, Corinne suggests that the death occur on Friday, August 13, 2021 as part of a "wicked" death.

People Magazine may have received money from the assisted suicide lobby for Vanessa Etienne to write this quircky and dangerous article promoting couple assisted suicide.

This article shows you just how bad the assisted suicide lobby has become. The reality is that this article provides enough information to open an investigation into the deaths of Eva and Druse Neumann.

Even considering the lack of oversight of the Washington State assisted suicide law, it is questionable, at best, that Druse actually qualified for assisted suicide. This story suggests that Corinne went out of her way to arrange her father's death.

I really hope that authorities in Washington State will investigate these deaths.

• Previous articles about this topic (Articles Link).

It's time to audit the death bureaucracy

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition has petitioned the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to investigate the assisted suicide drug cocktails. (Petition Link).

Last week the Washington Examiner published an editorial opinion calling on the US states that have legalized assisted suicide to audit their death bureaucracy. The article states:

A deeply disturbing investigative report in UnHerd last week uncovered rampant violations of physician-assisted suicide practices in states with the oldest and largest programs. The 11 states that have legalized assisted suicide require clinicians to submit compliance forms shortly after the “patient’s” death. But the chaotic assisted-suicide bureaucracy rarely follows regulations, and clinicians put people to death with little to no oversight.

Between 2009 and 2023, 515 compliance forms and 293 “written request” documents were missing in the state of Washington. In all, one-third of the state’s assisted suicides were improperly reported. In Colorado, which passed its End of Life Options Act in 2016, almost 1,800 compliance forms are missing. And in New Mexico, where annual compliance reporting is also required by law, there has not been a single report issued since assisted suicide was enacted in 2021. For years, the state’s website suggested that a report was “coming soon,” but state officials quietly removed that promise from its website this summer.

Disturbingly, there have been no suspensions or revocations of clinician licenses connected with these irregularities.

Failing to report an assisted suicide is no mere statutory violation. Washington law states medical providers and pharmacists who neglect to “make a good-faith effort to file required documentation in a complete and timely manner” risk losing immunity protection for criminal acts.

The missing compliance reports are only the tip of the iceberg. Officials in Colorado and California were unable to provide numbers for the total assisted suicides carried out by clinicians and held no record of the type of drugs prescribed to more than 1,000 “patients.” Authorities in Oregon don’t know the result of 178 cases from 2024 in which “aid in dying” medications were prescribed.

Did the “patients” take the drugs in those cases? Did those drugs cause death? Did the “patients” even die? Oregon has no records on any of this.

Record keeping in Washington is even worse. By law, the state is supposed to perform a review of reporting compliance each year. But, blaming funding cuts, officials announced that they will no longer issue these legally required reports.

As more and more states consider whether to adopt assisted-suicide laws, a true accounting is needed to provide voters with accurate information about the outcomes of these laws in states where they are already established.

Given the gravity of the new revelations, the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General, in coordination with the Justice Department, should launch an immediate investigation into states’ assisted-suicide programs. It should focus on three critical areas: the failure to file mandatory compliance forms, inadequate tracking of lethal prescriptions, and the absence of disciplinary action against clinicians who endanger “patients” through noncompliance.

As assisted suicide spreads, the risk grows that vulnerable people, those feeling like burdens or facing financial strain, will be nudged toward death rather than helped to live. This is not compassion — it’s the worst sort of cultural and moral failure.

It is time for accountability.

More articles on this topic:

• How America Abandoned its assisted suicide safeguards (Link).
• Assisted suicide lobby launches court case to force Colorado to permit suicide tourism (Link). 
• The push to legalize and extend assisted suicide in America (Link).
• Oregon 2024 assisted suicide report (Link). 
• Death by assisted suicide is not what you think it is (Link).  
• Assisted suicide laws, once passed will inevitably expand (Link). 
• New York assisted suicide bill is a "bait and switch" (Link). 
• Oregon bill would expand assisted suicide again (Link).

How America abandoned its assisted suicide "safeguards"

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Alexander Raikin

Alexander Raikin wrote an excellent article: How America abandoned its suicide safeguards which explains how the US states that have legalized assisted suicide abandoned the "safeguards" in their assisted suicide laws. I have written several articles on this topic especially since nearly every assisted suicide law in America, once passed, was later expanded. Raikin explains:

In 2020, Jane, a 29-year-old Colorado woman with eating disorders, was “provided with lethal drugs … in the midst of a mental-health crisis”, according to a lawsuit filed this year by the Institute for Patients’ Rights, an advocacy group seeking to overturn Colorado’s assisted-suicide program. Jane qualified for assisted suicide, the lawsuit contends, yet she was discharged from a hospice because she no longer qualified for hospice care, and her hospice considered her no longer competent to consent to medical treatments. So how could she have consented to suicide-by-doctor?

Jane was fortunate: her parents successfully sued for guardianship, and a court ordered the medication to be destroyed. Jane “went on to recover from all of it, including her anorexia”, according to Matt Vallière, the executive director of the Institute for Patients’ Rights. Jane found work as an occupational therapist, went on vacation, and even purchased a home. Although she ultimately died two years later of complications from her history of eating disorders, she’d had an opportunity to “live her best life”, Vallière says. That any medical professional decided that Jane qualified for assisted suicide, he claims, was “absurd”.

Raikin states that Jane’s case isn’t unusual and violations of assisted-suicide laws are rampant with no known suspensions or revocations of clinician licenses, even when patients were endangered. Raikin explains how these laws are being violated:

Much of the issue is oversight. In each of the 11 states that have implemented suicide-by-doctor, regulations require clinicians to submit compliance forms, typically within days of a patient’s death. These forms document that the patient expressly consented to die through assisted suicide, and that the clinicians followed all necessary legal safeguards and eligibility criteria, including affirming that the patient is terminally ill and of sound mind.

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. In Colorado, my calculations find that almost 1,800 compliance forms have remained missing since 2017.

The actual number of assisted suicide deaths is unknown. Raikin writes:

States can’t answer the most basic question: how many physician-assisted suicides have been facilitated by clinicians in America? Across Colorado and California, state authorities have no record of the type of “aid-in-dying drugs” that were prescribed to more than 1,000 patients, according to my analysis of state reports, including the California End of Life Option Act 2024 Data Report. In Oregon, the health authority has records on 376 assisted suicides completed in 2024, but for another 178 cases in which medications were prescribed, authorities don’t know if the patient died by ingesting the drugs, or even died at all.

Washington State has decided to stop publishing the assisted suicide data.

In 2022, Washington state announced that its Department of Health is diverting “all available funding” for its assisted-suicide compliance-review program to “data entry of submitted forms”, due to lack of funding from the state. Data entry is commendable. But by law, the state is also required to “review” reporting compliance and issue an annual report. Instead, this summer, a pop-up appeared on the department’s website: “Important Note: Due to funding cuts, the Death with Dignity Program at the Department of Health is suspended. … A 2024 annual statistical report will not be released.”

Washington state’s decision surprised even assisted-suicide clinicians. Jessica Kaan, the medical director for End of Life Washington, an institution which facilitates assisted suicides in the state, warned on a forum for providers that “no one will even be monitoring or responding to emails or phone calls that come into the DOH [Department of Health] about the DWD [Dying With Dignity] program”. Kaan called it “a grim situation”. After this push back, the state announced that it will release the 2024 report after all — but it will be the last one ever to be released.

Raikin then explains that New Mexico does not publish an annual report, even though the assisted suicide law requires an annual report. States are also removing the "safeguards" in the law. Raikin explains:

This systematic disregard of safeguards is happening as the process is being fast-tracked: states are removing requirements that applicants reside in state; allowing less-credentialed providers, such as social workers, nurses, and physician associates,to perform assessments instead of psychiatrists and psychologists; and reducing minimum waiting periods. In Oregon, which waived waiting periods in 2020,clinicians have reported in Oregon’s annual Death with Dignity Act report that assisted suicides routinely occur on the same or next day the patient makes there quest. Since in some cases it takes up to five days for a patient to die from ingesting the death cocktail, it is possible that it will take a patient longer to die than to receive lethal prescriptions.

The proportion of vulnerable persons dying by assisted suicide has also increased. Raikin writes:

The proportion of deaths of vulnerable patients has also increased by magnitudes. In the first year of Washington state’s program, 16% of patients mentioned “the physical or emotional burden on family, friends, or caregivers” as a reason for their decision to die, and 2% were concerned about “the financial cost of treating or prolonging the patient’s terminal condition”. By 2023, according to the state’s reporting, the number concerned with “feeling like a burden” jumped to half of all assisted-suicide deaths, and a 10th were concerned about “financial implications of treatment”.

A similar trend is unfolding in Oregon. In 2009, the first year that the program was available, no patients told their assisted-suicide clinician that they were choosing to die because of financial concerns, and only 12% felt like a burden. By 2024, the state’s reporting revealed that it was 9% and 42% of all assisted suicide deaths, respectively. No other states even report this data. The “attending physician follow-up form” in California, which records patient concerns that contribute to the choice of “aid-in-dying”, doesn’t have “financial concerns” or “feeling like a burden” on its otherwise identical menu of options.

Compliance with the law from physicians and the government is lacking. Raikin interviewed Craig New who overseas the assisted suicide program in Oregon. Raikin reports:

Craig New, who told me on the telephone that he’s the sole employee of the Oregon Health Authority responsible for monitoring compliance reporting, says that “ultimately the things usually get resolved because we bug them until they finally send in the paperwork”,but even so, his office has reported around a dozen physicians to the Oregon Medical Board for violations of compliance reporting. Thanks to privacy laws regarding medical licensing, it is impossible to know whether the reported physicians faced repercussions, but my review of the Oregon Medical Board’s investigations reveals that few offenses are prosecuted.

Raikin reports that Dr Rose Jeanine Kenny, in Oregon, was reprimanded by the Oregon Medical Board for contravening the assisted suicide law:

One example is Rose Jeannine Kenny, a family doctor, who in 2016 was sentenced to five years probation by the Oregon Medical Board for dozens of alleged prescription violations. Later the board received “credible information” that Kenny may have again violated the same provisions she was previously reprimanded for, and may possibly have committed “violations of the Oregon Death with Dignity Act”, such as failure to ensure consent, follow the rules of written and oral assisted suicide requests, abide by the minimum waiting period, and file compliance records. Kenny once again kept her license, this time by agreeing to “participate in all physician steps” for 10 more assisted suicides, supervised by a mentoring physician from Compassion & Choices — the largest lobbying group for assisted suicide in the United States. (UnHerd was unable to reach Dr. Kenny at any of the medical practices with which she is associated online.)

Raikin states that no researchers or law enforcement are allowed to systematically review the assisted suicide records. He then tells the story of a person in Maryland with a eating distorder:

Recent court proceedings in Maryland eerily echo the lawsuit regarding Jane. Angela Guarda, the director of the Eating Disorders Program at Johns Hopkins Hospital, testified that she was contacted by an ex-patient of Jennifer Gaudiani, the physician who coined the term “terminal anorexia”, and who has prescribed assisted-suicide medication to at least one patient. The concept of terminal anorexia was meant to apply only to patients over age 30; for younger patients, Gaudiani stressed in a paper for the Journal of Eating Disorders that “every effort should be made to promote full recovery and continuation of life”.

The ex-patient reported that her assisted-suicide assessor told her “she would ‘make an exception’ for me and ‘allow’ me to die”. The patient reported feeling coerced. She eventually weaned herself off morphine and hospice drugs and, 18 months later, reports that she’s doing well, with a job, a group of friends and a new puppy.

Raikin ends the article by stating:

Patients like these, who need hope the most, are facing much more than their illnesses. They also confront an assisted-suicide regime that blatantly and routinely violates the legal safeguards that were meant to ensure their protection from a death they might not want.

Further articles on this topic:

• Assisted suicide lobby launches court case to force Colorado to permit suicide tourism (Link). 
• The push to legalize and extend assisted suicide in America (Link).
• Oregon 2024 assisted suicide report (Link). 
• Death by assisted suicide is not what you think it is (Link).  
• Assisted suicide laws, once passed will inevitably expand (Link). 
• New York assisted suicide bill is a "bait and switch" (Link). 
• Oregon bill would expand assisted suicide again (Link).
  

Washington State Ceases Publishing Legally Required Annual Assisted Suicide Reports

This article was published by National Review online on July 20, 2025.

By Wesley Smith

The legalization law requires annual reports to be issued by the state to promote transparency. Well, from now on, opaqueness will be the order of the day. From the Medical Futility blog, by pro-assisted-suicide activist Thaddeus Mason Pope (whose blog is a reliable source of information on these issues):

Like almost all other aid-in-dying jurisdictions, the Washington State statute requires the “department of health shall generate and make available to the public an annual statistical report of information collected.” In response, the Washington DOH dutifully published 15 reports between 2009 and 2023.

But because of funding cuts, the DOH announced that the 2023 report was its last. There will be no more reports on how many patients are using MAID in Washington. No more demographic information about these patients.

Some states are slow in publishing their data. For example, we have yet to see a report from New Mexico even though the law was enacted in 2021. Other states have not published any data for over a year or more. But only Montana has never even promised to provide public data. Now Washington will similarly provide no public data.

Just remember: when activists tell you they want strict controls on assisted suicide to induce you to go along, they don’t mean it. Their goal is to effectuate wide-open euthanasia through incrementalism — a tactic that begins almost as soon as the laws go into effect.

But many people don’t seem to care much about that, perhaps preferring a comfortable pretense to grappling with the inevitable consequences that flow from such a radical change in law and morality.

Petition: The US Food and Drug Administration must investigate assisted suicide drug cocktails

To the FDA's Compounding Incidents Program, (Link to the online petition). (Link to the paper petition).

The petitioners draw your attention to the following:

Whereas the compounded drug cocktails being used for assisted suicide have had high rates of overdose, failure of expected pharmacological action, and adverse experiences associated with their use for assisted suicide; and;

Whereas the experiments that continue to be done to develop the compounded drug cocktails used for assisted suicide violate the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ regulations for the protection of human subjects under 45 CFR part 46;

Therefore, we call on the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to investigate the adverse drug experiences with the compounded drug cocktails used for assisted suicide.

(Link to the online petition). (Link to the paper petition).

Information:

Despite claims that assisted suicide is a painless death, complications with assisted suicide remain common, and in fact have increased over the last decade. The FDA’s Compounding Incidents Program aims to protect the public against poor quality compounded drugs, yet no research has been done on whether the assisted suicide cocktails currently in use meet current standards.

An article by Manuela Callari published by Medscape on March 13, 2025, asked the question, “Do We Know Enough About Assisted Dying Drugs?” (1) Claud Regnard, MD, a retired palliative medicine consultant in the UK told Medscape:

“The amount of evidence supporting the use of these drugs is astoundingly small. The last study looking at efficacy and side effects was published 25 years ago, using data from 10 years earlier. 

“You wouldn’t allow this in any way with any other sort of drugs,” Regnard said. In a 2022 study, he found that drugs used for assisted dying have not undergone the usual level of scrutiny.(2)

The pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of these drugs at high doses remain poorly understood. “We extrapolate from therapeutic doses, but we have no proper data on what happens at lethal doses,” Regnard said. “That’s not science—that’s guesswork.”

Based on the Oregon data we know that there are serious problems with the use of compounded drugs for assisted suicide. 

The 2023 Oregon Death with Dignity Act report indicated that the longest time for an assisted suicide death was 137 hours (five days plus 17 hours) and the assisted suicide complications rate was almost 10%. In Oregon, complications are only reported when a health care provider is present at the death. In 2023, there were ten known complications based on 102 reports from health care providers. (3)

Regarding the assisted suicide drug trials, JoNel Aleccia reported the following for The Seattle Times on March 5, 2017:

[Dr. Carol] Parrot and [Dr. Robert] Wood are part of a seven-member group of doctors in the Northwest who came up with the three-drug protocol after Valeant Pharmaceuticals Inc. acquired the rights to secobarbital, known as Seconal, in 2015 and raised the price sharply. 

“We wanted the new drug regime to be safe, reliable and effective—and cost $500 or less,” said Parrot.

Earlier in the article, Aleccia states,

The first Seconal alternative turned out to be too harsh, burning patients’ mouths and throats, causing some to scream in pain. The second drug mix, used 67 times, has led to deaths that stretched out hours in some patients—and up to 31 hours in one case. (4)

Lisa Krieger’s article, published in Medical Xpress on September 8, 2020, also reported on the lethal drug cocktail trials:

A little-known secret, not publicized by advocates of aid-in-dying, was that while most deaths were speedy, others were very slow. Some patients lingered for six or nine hours; a few, more than three days. No one knew why, or what needed to change. 

“The public thinks that you take a pill and you’re done,” said Dr. Gary Pasternak, chief medical officer of Mission Hospice in San Mateo. “But it’s more complicated than that.” (5)

Doctors who participate in assisted suicide developed lethal compounded drug cocktails with human trials. The developers were concerned with the lethal efficacy and cost of the drug cocktail as opposed to the negative consequences associated with its use. The assisted suicide drug cocktail trials appear to have violated the Nuremburg Code.

We, the petitioners, call on the FDA to perform an investigation into the use of compounded drug cocktails used for assisted suicide based on the high rates of adverse experiences and into the experiments done to develop the assisted suicide drug cocktails that appear to have violated 45 CFR part 46.

References:

1. Manuela Callari, “Do We Know Enough About Assisted Dying Drugs?” Medscape, March 13, 2025 https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/do-we-know-enough-about-assisted-dying-drugs-2025a100064q?form=fpf, accessed June 16, 2025.
2. Worthington, A., Finlay, I., and Regnard C. (March 10, 2022). Efficacy and safety of drugs used for ‘assisted dying’ British Medical Bulletin. 142:15-22. https://doi.org/10.1093/bmb/idac009
3. Oregon Death with Dignity Act 2023 report https://www.oregon.gov/oha/PH/PROVIDERPARTNERRESOURCES/EVALUATIONRESEARCH/DEATHWITHDIGNITYACT/Documents/year26.pdf, accessed June 16, 2025.
4. JoNel Aleccia, “Northwest doctors rethink aid-in-dying drugs to avoid prolonged deaths,” The Seattle Times, October 5, 2017, https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/northwest-doctors-rethink-aid-in-dying-drugs-to-avoid-prolonged-deaths/, accessed June 16, 2025.
5. Lisa Kreiger, “Doctors seek life-ending drugs that smooth the way for the terminally ill,” The Medical Express, September 8, 2020, https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-09-doctors-life-ending-drugs-smooth-terminally.html, accessed June 16, 2025.

Maine and New Jersey are debating assisted suicide expansion bills.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director,
Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

I have written several articles explaining that the assisted suicide lobby in the US employ a "bait and switch" tactic. The assisted suicide lobby designs legislation that is designed to pass, with the intention of expanding the law later. The assisted suicide lobby knows that it is harder to legalize assisted suicide than to expand the bill once assisted suicide is legal.

I have already written about the Vermont, Oregon, Washington State and California bills to expand assisted suicide laws in 2025. Maine and New Jersey also have bills to expand their assisted suicide laws.

Maine Bill LD613 permits the attending physician to waive the waiting period. The bill states:

The attending physician may waive any portion or all of the waiting periods if, in the attending physician's medical opinion, it is in the best interests of the qualified patient, given the qualified patient's condition.

New Jersey S3588 also permits the 15 day waiting period to be waived. The bill states:

This bill waives the 15-day waiting periods in the case of a patient who, based on reasonable medical certainty, is not expected to survive for 15 days. The attending physician will be required to document the medical basis for the determination that the patient is not expected to survive for 15 days. The bill retains the 48-hour waiting period between submission of a written request and the issuance of a prescription for medical aid in dying medication.

Therefore there are six states in 2025 that have bills to expand their assisted suicide law.

The good news is that Montana Bill SB 136 passed in the Montana Senate by a vote of 29 to 20 and will soon be debated in the Montana House. This is a potential massive victory.

Assisted suicide laws, once passed will inevitably expand (Article Link).

The assisted suicide lobby emply a "bait and switch" tactic where the bill is designed for legalization and once legal it is later expanded. (Article Link).

California bill may extend assisted suicide to euthanasia.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director,
Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

There are currently three states, in 2025, that have bills to expand their assisted suicide laws (Vermont, Oregon and Washington State).

Senator Blakespear, who last year sponsored Senate Bill 1196, a bill that would have expanded the California assisted suicide law to include euthanasia and removed the terminal illness requirement from the law, indicated that she will be sponsoring Bill SB 403, a bill to expand California's assisted suicide law.

Thaddeus Pope

The text of SB 403 has not been released but on February 18, euthanasia and assisted suicide activist and academic, Thaddeus Pope, published on his Medical Futility Blog that:

California is again looking to amend its 2015 End of Life Option Act. S.B. 403 will likely call for a study committee to examine several amendments:

1. Permitting IV self-administration of medications - because it is significantly safer and more effective than ingestion of medications,
2. Permitting APRNs to prescribe - because this has improved access with no risk to safety in other states (NM HI WA CO),
3. Eliminating the 6-month terminal illness requirement - because it is arbitrary and excludes patients with serious irreversible illnesses who want to avoid intolerable suffering,
4. Eliminating the sunset clause - because the EOLOA expires in 2031,
5. Eliminating the residency requirement - because it is unconstitutional and patients are coming to California for MAID anyway,
6. Other amendments.

SB 403 is very similar to last year's SB 1196. Since the language of the bill is not released I can only comment on the concepts related to the changes.

 

1. Permitting IV self-administration will allow for euthanasia, which is homicide. Euthanasia is done in Canada by IV administration. Since there is no oversight in California's assisted suicide law, meaning, the doctor who assists the death is also the person who reports the death (no third party involvement) therefore allowing IV self-administration cannot be distinguished from IV administration. Therefore permitting IV self-administration in fact will also allow euthanasia (homicide).

2. Permitting non-doctors to assist suicide by prescribing lethal poison is based on the lack of doctors who are willing to assist the suicides of their patients. More people who are permitted to kill leads to more killing.

3. Replacing the 6 month terminal illness requirement with a definition of serious irreversible illnesses who want to avoid intolerable suffering eliminates the terminal illness requirement. 

 

Eliminating the terminal illness requirement leads to people with disabilities "qualifying" for death by lethal poison for reasons of poverty, homelessness, an inability to obtain necessary services or medical treatment as has happened in Canada. The Ontario Coroner's MAiD death review committee report indicated that some euthanasia deaths are driven by homelessness, fear and isolation (Article Link).

4. Eliminating the residency requirement allows for suicide tourism. Pope states that the residency requirement is unconstitutional. In September 2024 a New Jersey court disagreed with Pope. Further to that, Pope admits that non-residents are already dying by assisted suicide in California. Breaking the law is not a reason to change the law.

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition will expose SB 403 and this article will be updated when the language of the bill is officially released.

Washington state Bill HB 1876 permits non-doctors to assist suicides.

Alex Schadenberg

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, 

Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Washington State Bill HB 1876 will expand the state assisted suicide law by permitting physician assistants and advanced practice registered nurses to participate in assisting suicide by expanding the definition of "attending qualified medical provider." The bill also permits the "attending qualified medical provider" to waive the 7 day waiting period within the law to enable a same day death.

The assisted suicide lobby is trying to expand assisted suicide laws in Vermont, Oregon and Washington state by expanding who can assist a suicide and to waive the waiting periods. 

The good news is that Montana Senate Bill 136 that will reverse Montana's assisted suicide acceptance and once again prohibit assisted suicide passed in the Montana Senate on February 7 and will soon be debated in the Montana House. If SB 136 passes, Montana will be the first state to reverse assisted suicide and prohibit it again.

On January 30, I published an article concerning Vermont Bill 75 that expands Vermont's assisted suicide law for the third time by allowing (non doctors) naturopathic physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants to participate in assisting a suicide.

On February 12, I published an article concerning Oregon Bill SB 1003 that expands Oregon's assisted suicide law for the third time by allowing (non doctors) physician assistants and nurse practitioners to participate in assisting a suicide. SB 1003 also reduces the waiting period from 15 days to 48 hours while enabling the "providing prescriber" to waive the waiting period to essentially allow a same day death.

The assisted suicide lobby is responding to the fact that very few doctors are willing to be involved with killing patients. By adding physician assistants and nurse practitioners they increase the number of providers who are willing to be involved with killing.

The assisted suicide lobby is wanting to eliminate the waiting periods for assisted suicide to enable a "same day death." No need to wait to pick up your lethal poison cocktail, no chance to change your mind.

When the assisted suicide lobby is trying to legalize assisted suicide they sell the "safeguards" in the bill. This is the "bait and switch" sales technique that is used by the assisted suicide lobby. 

Once legal, assisted suicide laws inevitably expand (Article Link). 

In 2025, assisted suicide legalization bills have already been introduced in Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island and Tennessee.

The assisted suicide lobby is focusing on Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts and New York.

2024 was a great year for preventing assisted suicide in America. 2025 will begin with a challenge.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Alex speaking in West Virginia

On September 20, Delaware Governor John Carney vetoed Assisted Suicide Bill HB 140 (Link to the Statement by Governor Carney).

When Governor Carney vetoed HB 140 he continued the success with no new state having legalized assisted suicide in the past three years.

On November 5, West Virginia votes passed Amendment 1, preventing the legalization of assisted suicide. Amendment 1 passed with a narrow victory with 50.5% voting YES. West Virginia is the first US State to create a constitutional protection from assisted suicide.

Even though 2024 represented one of the most successful years in defeating at least 20 state assisted suicide bills. We will not rest.

2025 is expected to be as busy a year as 2024.

The assisted suicide lobby has already announced the introduction of a 2025 Delaware assisted suicide bill. The new bill will need to be defeated in the House or Senate since Delaware Governor-elect Matt Meyer has expressed support for legalizing assisted suicide.

The New York assisted suicide lobby announced the introduction of their 2025 assisted suicide bill with a planned campaign kick off and lobby day with other scheduled events. New York has faced assisted suicide bills nearly every year since 2016.

The assisted suicide lobby has also prepared a bill for Missouri, which is not likely to pass. In fact we expect to see at least 20 states debate assisted suicide bills in 2025.

Nearly every state that has legalized assisted suicide has expanded the law.

Colorado, which legalized assisted suicide in 2016, in 2024 passed Senate Bill 24-068 expanding the Colorado assisted suicide law by: allowing advanced practice registered nurses to approve and prescribe lethal poison, reducing the waiting period from 15 days to 7 days, and allowing doctors or advanced practise registered nurse to waive the waiting period if the person is near to death.

The original version of SB 24-068 would have removed the residency requirement for assisted suicide in Colorado. 

We expect that other states will attempt to further expand their laws in 2025.

In 2023 Washington State expanded their assisted suicide law by allowing advanced practice registered nurses to approve and prescribe lethal poison, by reducing the waiting period to 7 days and to force healthcare institutions and hospices to post their assisted suicide policies. 

Washington State has already announced another expansion bill. This bill defines assisted suicide as a "protected healthcare service" and will force healthcare providers to be complicit in promoting assisted suicide. The Washington State bill is part of the assisted suicide lobby's strategy of defining assisted suicide as healthcare and forcing healthcare institutions to provide it as a "service."

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition predicts that assisted suicide will be debated in at least 20 US states, but since Oregon and Vermont removed their residency requirement assisted suicide has also become a national issue.

There is currently a legal challenge by the assisted suicide lobby to force New Jersey to remove it's state assisted suicide residency requirement.

It is possible that the battle to protect people from assisted suicide might move into the federal realm in 2025 since the assisted suicide lobby has removed state barriers to killing.

The goal of the assisted suicide lobby is to legalize assisted suicide in more states and to expand the scope of the assisted suicide laws in the states that have legalized it.

The goal of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition is to prevent the legalization of assisted suicide in states where it is currently illegal while rolling back the legalization of assisted suicide in states where it is legal.

American experience with assisted suicide confirms slippery slope

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Public Discourse published an excellent article by Richard Doerflinger, where Doerflinger explains to jurisdictions, such as Great Britain, that the assisted suicide slippery slope in America is disturbingly genuine. Doerflinger, who has researched the issue of assisted suicide for many years is challenging an Economist editorial supporting assisted suicide. 

Doerflinger writes:

Permitting assisted suicide for terminally ill patients has been debated for many years in Great Britain, as in the U.S. and other countries. The Parliament has never approved such a law, but proponents think this year may give them a victory.

The respected London-based periodical The Economist, which has supported the idea since 2015, recently weighed in with an editorial that offers a convenient overview of the campaign for what the editors call “assisted dying.” While dismissing the idea of a “slippery slope” toward broader killing, their own arguments illustrate that slope.

Doerflinger states the argument made by the Economist:

They begin with a broad claim that Britons “should have the right to choose the manner and timing of their death.” On its face, this is an argument for a “right” to suicide for everyone. The article ends with a call for a right held by all “adults of sound mind who are enduring unbearable suffering with no prospect of recovery,” noting that many people “suffer terribly with a disease that is not terminal.” Suffering, of course, is also not restricted to people with an illness.

The editorial’s insistence that people have a right to “take matters into their own hands” also misstates the issue. This is not about legalizing efforts to cause one’s own death, which have long been seen as meriting counseling and treatment rather than punishment. It is about some people—especially members of what some of us still call “the healing professions”—helping to cause the death of other people.