On April 1, the Oregon Health Association (OHA) published its annual Death with Dignity Act (DWDA) Report. This report provides a statistical overview of the rates of assisted suicide in the state and the demographics of its victims. Although the report purports to demonstrate the government’s oversight and good documentation of assisted suicide, it ends up highlighting the defects and troubling information gaps plaguing the DWDA’s system.
Untracked Prescriptions and Lost Lethal Drugs
Assisted suicide has been legal in Oregon since 1997 and has been in use since 1998. In 2025, 400 people, a slight decrease from 2024, died as a result of assisted suicide in the state. Even more troubling is the growing disparity between prescriptions and deaths; in 2025, 637 prescriptions were dispensed, but only 358 were known to have caused death while 100 individuals passed away without using the drugs. However, the state does not know the status of the remaining 179 prescriptions. Further, in 2025, the report disclosed that doctors gave prescriptions to 30 persons from outside the state. A troubling footnote (p. 7 n.†) explains that the OHA cannot document deaths outside of Oregon, and has thus lost track of the prescriptions. With so many of the prescriptions lost, there is no way to guarantee that the drugs are used by the intended recipient. This is disturbing because the drugs are experimental compounds at lethal dosages. As of 2023, there were at least two reported cases where relatives took sips of the assisted suicide drugs and barely survived. Untracked and “lost to follow-up”, these drugs pose a huge danger to society, especially with the rates of non-assisted suicide increasing. In 2024 alone, 941 individuals in Oregon took their own lives outside of the “Death With Dignity Act” legal framework.
Compliance and Coercion
The Oregon DWDA tries to combat this danger by requiring physicians to report prescriptions, deaths, and complications to the OHA. This measure, however, is entirely dependent on the physicians’ compliance. Unfortunately, significant amounts of data are missing because of non-compliance. Additionally, although medical professionals are encouraged to oversee ingestions and deaths, the report explains that 21% of patients did not have any medical professional or volunteer present when they took the medicine and 44% had neither when they died. This brings up the additional complication of coercion from family members. Since the majority of assisted suicide patients are older than 65, they are prime targets for elder abuse.
Missing Data on Complications and Side Effects
Lack of medical presence and reporting also leads to missing data about side effects accompanying death. Although the DWDA report claims that the medications do not have other issues — only 7 patients reported difficulty swallowing the medicine while 113 patients experienced no apparent complications — they do not have records on 280 patients. With missing data for over half of the patients, it is impossible to draw any conclusions about the complication rate of the medications beyond death.
Drug Cocktails Without FDA Approval
The drugs used in assisted suicide have also changed drastically over the years. In 2025, three different combinations of drugs were used, including DDHAPh (diazepam, digoxin, hydromorphone, amitriptyline, and phenobarbital), a concoction used for the first time this year by 13.3% of patients. Although the assisted suicide front is quick to say that these drugs are effective and have minimal complications, they can only be tested by being used on the patients themselves. Further, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which ensures the safety and efficacy of medications, can never approve assisted suicide drugs because they are inherently unsafe. Assisted suicide drugs do not treat any medical condition but instead prematurely end a patient’s life.
Doctor Shopping and Inadequate Mental Health Screening
Another issue around physician oversight arises from the short-term relationships between patients and doctors. This past year, the median number of weeks that patients knew their doctors was the lowest yet — around four weeks — indicating the presence of doctor shopping. For some individuals, the physician-patient relationship was less than a week. While most people value a long-term relationship with their physicians, doctor shopping involves patients simply seeking an immediate service from the physician. Doctor shopping is especially dangerous for patients seeking assisted suicide. The doctors are chosen simply because they are willing to help kill the patient. Thus, they are less likely to accurately assess the mental health of a patient. Therefore, it is unsurprising that only two patients were referred for psychiatric treatment after requesting assisted suicide. Although the patients have asked to kill themselves, most are deemed mentally competent. In any other circumstance, a healthy patient would be immediately referred to a psychiatrist if they mentioned their desire to kill themselves. However, since assisted suicide patients are terminally ill and often elderly, they are allowed to kill themselves within days.
Fear of Disability, Not Pain, Drives Most Requests
Assisted suicide activists typically claim that inadequate pain control is the most important reason to legalize death on demand. The DWDA report, however, reveals that the top reasons patients choose assisted suicide are related to apprehension about possible disabilities. 89% of patients claim that they fear losing autonomy or losing the ability to enjoy life. Only 37% fear loss of pain control. Loss of autonomy or enjoyment are the same issues which face the disabled community. Assisted suicide, however, encourages people, including the disabled, to die rather than to seek treatment options and resources that seek to improve their quality of life or prognosis.
The Hidden Cost of “Safeguards”
The Oregon report provides revealing insights into the murky world of assisted suicide. It highlights the fact that even with purported “safeguards” in place, there are many unknowns with assisted suicide. Because of the nature of assisted suicide, it is nearly impossible to monitor the side effects or pressures, familial, financial or otherwise, suffered by the terminally ill. As the threat of assisted suicide rises in parts of the country, Americans United for Life will continue to fight to ensure that all life is valued, from conception to natural death.
