Suicide drugs could become available from pharmacists if assisted suicide is legalised, two of the UK’s most highly regarded legal and medical experts have said.

Suicide drugs could become available from pharmacists if assisted suicide is legalised, two of the UK’s most highly regarded legal and medical experts have said. Changes in the law could make it possible for nurses and chemists to prescribe medication to sick and disabled patients that would allow them to kill themselves, according to a report by Lord Carlile and Baroness Finlay.

In a paper commissioned by think tank Living and Dying Well, they also cautioned that liberalising euthanasia regulations could lead to state agencies being set up to decide whether or not people should be assisted in dying.

Lord Carlile is the government-appointed independent assessor of terror legislation, and Lady Finlay is Professor of Palliative Care at Cardiff University. In their view, desperate patients and their families might resort to “doctor shopping” in the attempt to find a GP to assist them in dying. According to the report: “There is no reason why, if assisted dying were ever to be legalised, lethal drugs could not be prescribed by a physician, nurse of pharmacist.”

While assisting suicide carries a prison sentence of 14 years in Britain, over 150 Britons have travelled to Zurich to commit assisted suicide in the Dignitas suicide clinic in Switzerland in order to remove the possibility that family members be charged with a crime. ~ London Telegraph, May 5

Suicide drugs could become available over the counter in UK if euthanasia laws are changed
Jared Yee
suicide
UK

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