On June 5, 1998, United States attorney general Janet Reno declared that doctors who prescribed lethal medicine to terminally ill patients would not be prosecuted. The decision overturned a Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) policy statement that had been issued in November of that year without her approval. The DEA policy stated that using drugs to commit suicide is not permitted under federal drug laws and that the United States government would impose severe penalties on any doctor who prescribed lethal drugs to patients. By overruling the DEA, Reno eliminated the last legal barrier to the implementation of the controversial Oregon assisted-suicide law. Oregon State's Death with Dignity Act, which had been passed by voters in 1994 but had been blocked by federal legal challenges ever since, permits terminally ill patients to request lethal drugs to hasten their death—provided they are mentally competent and considered by two doctors to have...