Con

Russel Ogden, MA, Criminology Instructor at the Kwantlen Polytechnic University, wrote in a Dec. 1997 Policy Options article "Oregon's Measure 16: A Bitter Pill":

“There is paucity of research into the dosages and types of drugs necessary to cause death and no pharmaceutical company has developed a sure-fire suicide pill… In the course of my own research I have heard horrific stories of patients taking massive quantities of drugs that have been fatal with other persons and yet they have either survived or suffered through lingering deaths. Risks include vomiting the drugs, coma, psychosis and even de-cerebration where the patient is brain dead but still breathing. Sometimes these protracted deaths elicit friends or partners to resort to smothering with pillows or asphyxiation with plastic bags. One physician reported to me that he took the recourse of holding shut the mouth and nostrils of a comatose patient.”

Dec. 1997