Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Mar 28, 2024 / 15:00 pm
The Oregon Health Authority (OHA) is reporting a significant rise in assisted suicide prescriptions and deaths in the state, a move that comes after authorities in 2022 began allowing out-of-state residents to access the lethal services.
Since the state’s passage of the “Death with Dignity Act” in 1997, assisted suicide numbers have been generally rising there, with a markedly sharp uptick since 2013. OHA on March 20 released its 2023 assisted suicide data summary that reported a considerable increase in suicide prescriptions in 2023.
The study found that assisted suicide prescriptions in the state rose from 433 in 2022 to 560 last year.
Of those 560 prescriptions, 367 people are known to have died from ingesting the suicide “medications.” This is up from the 304 who died from assisted suicide drugs in Oregon in 2022.