X-Message-Number: 8814
Date: Wed, 19 Nov 1997 16:48:18 -0700
From: David Brandt-Erichsen <>
Subject: Oregon update

Euthanasia Research & Guidance Organization (ERGO!) reports that a group of
drugstores in Eugene, Oregon, has told its pharmacy employees that if they
write a prescription for PAS under the state's new Death with Dignity Act,
they will be fired.

The owner of Tiffany's Drug Stores, which has drug dispensing facilities
within his four stores, has made all employees sign a document stating that
they will not write lethal prescriptions.  An employee told ERGO! "I was
damned annoyed, and told the owner so. I believe in the right to PAS under
the law and would have written such a prescription if asked.  The owner
replied, 'Write one and you're fired.'" But the employee admitted that it
was his employer's privilege to decide policy on such matters, so he had to
go along with it.  

It appears that owners of pharmacies are afraid of two things: (1)
financial liability if the prescription failed. (Legal liability is
something American pharmacies have never previously had to worry about,
only the physicians.)  (2) That militant right to life groups will target
them in a vociferous and perhaps violent manner.

Geoff Sugerman, political consultant to Oregon Right to Die, sponsors of
the new law, which took effect October 27, said the Tiffany's owner was
well within his rights as a health provider to refuse to participate under
the Act.

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