By Alex Schadenberg (pictured at right)*
The New Jersey 2023 assisted suicide report states that there were 101 reported assisted suicide deaths in 2023 up from 91 in 2022. Assisted suicide started in New Jersey on April 12, 2019. According to the report:
101 people were known to have died by assisted suicide,
13 people received the lethal poison but died a natural death,
3 people received the lethal poison but had not died and
2 people received the lethal poison and died but the cause of death is unknown.
When the cause of death is unknown, it usually means that no report was submitted. Therefore it may have been an assisted suicide death, but no report was filed.
The assisted suicide lobby is pressuring the New Jersey government to waive the 15-day waiting period and remove the residency requirement. The waiting period protects people from dying at a low point in their life while the residency requirement prevents the state from becoming a suicide tourist destination.
Similar to other jurisdictions, the most common reason for approving death by assisted suicide is cancer (62%). In New Jersey only 3% of the deaths were for "other reasons." The New Jersey report does not indicate what conditions constituted "other reasons" but in some states "other reasons" included diabetes or eating disorders.
Nine different experimental lethal poison cocktails were used in 2022. In 2023, 4 different lethal poison cocktails were used with 96 of 101 people dying by the lethal poison cocktail: “Morphine, Diazepam, Phenobarbital, Amitriptyline, Digoxin, Zofran and Reglan”.
The New Jersey report does not include information about complications, length of relationship with the physician, time between first request and ingestion of the lethal dose, time between ingestion of the lethal dose and unconsciousness or time between ingestion of the lethal dose and death.
The report implies that the deaths were voluntary (self-administered), but the information in the report does not address that subject.
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* Alex Schadenberg is Executive Director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, Canada.
Original Publication: Wednesday, September 4, 2024