Record numbers of people ended their lives in California last year in America’s biggest doctor-assisted suicide program, after lawmakers made it easier for residents to get their hands on lethal drugs.

Last year, 1,270 people got fatal prescriptions under the state’s End of Life Option Act (ELOA), and 853 people used them to end their lives, the California Department of Public Health said in its annual report.

That’s a jump from 863 scripts and 522 deaths the previous year.

The data come amid growing concerns that California, Oregon, and other US states are liberalizing their assisted-suicide programs too quickly and following the example of Canada, where some 13,500 people were euthanized last year.

California witnessed a surge of assisted suicides after the rules were loosened at the start of 2022 

Those who choose an assisted suicide in the US typically get a cocktail of drugs they ingest at home

The surge in assisted suicides came after California lawmakers in 2021 backed a law that shortened from 15 days to 48 hours the time needed to apply for a cocktail of suicide drugs. That law took effect in January.

‘It’s no wonder that the number of assisted suicides soared in the year after the California legislature effectively removed the original 15-day cooling-off period,’ Matt Valliere, director of the Patients’ Rights Action Fund, told DailyMail.com.

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‘Most Medi-Cal patients cannot get a mental health consult in less than 72 hours and are not guaranteed palliative care, but now, they can get suicide drugs in 48 hours and the state will pay for it every time.’

California’s assisted suicide program is available to adults who have a terminal illness and less than six months to live. In 2022, most of those who ended their lives were elderly, white, college-educated residents suffering from cancer, heart disease or brain disease.

They typically ended their lives with a mix of sedatives, opioids, and cardiotonics, which make the heart pump faster. In most cases, they took them in their homes or at an assisted living facility.

Alex Schadenberg, director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, warned that many US assisted-suicide programs have unreliable data, as not all doctors accurately report scripts and deaths back to the state health body.

In California last year, doctors wrote 294 prescriptions for which there was an ‘unknown ingestion status,’ says the 15-page report.

That could mean the prescriptions were never filled, that life-threatening drugs are sitting unused in a drawer, or that the patient used them to kill themselves and the death was not recorded.

Most of those who ended their lives were suffering from cancer, heart disease or brain disease

‘The law gets in your head,’ says Ingrid Tischer, who lives with a form of muscular dystrophy

‘This self-reporting system makes it is impossible to know when a doctor does not send in a report or abuses the law,’ said Schadenberg.

California Department of Public Health did not immediately answer DailyMail.com’s request for more information.

Supporters of assisted suicide schemes say they help some desperately sick people end their suffering. Critics say they devalue human life and make death a solution for the infirm, disabled and even those who are cash-strapped or feel like a burden.

California started to allow physician-assisted suicides in June 2016. It permits terminally ill adult Californians, with less than six months left to live, to ask doctors for a fatal dose of drugs they then administer themselves, typically at home.

Matt Vallière, executive director of the Patients Rights Action Fund

Several campaign groups for disabled people earlier this year filed a lawsuit to declare California’s ELOA ‘unlawful and unconstitutional’ because it violates the Americans with Disabilities Act.

In their suit, they complain about the bias they faced trying to get health care during the coronavirus pandemic and say the system is too quick to offer assisted suicides.

People with disabilities often struggle to get the medical care they need and, as a result, may be quick to seek assisted suicide as an option, lawyers in the case say.

Ingrid Tischer, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, who lives with a form of muscular dystrophy, says doctors were unwilling to treat her properly when she contracted pneumonia during COVID-19.

‘The law gets in your head. That’s what happened to me,’ says Tischer.

A non-disabled person is steered towards suicide prevention. And the disabled person is steered toward a suicide prescription.’

Diane Coleman, a woman with neuromuscular disabilities who has used a wheelchair since childhood, and now heads the national rights group Not Dead Yet, is also involved in the lawsuit.

‘Assisted suicide is just one of the many symptoms of an ableist eugenics society that believes life with a disability is a fate worse than death,’ she said.

Supporters of California’s law say there are safeguards to the system, including a requirement that two doctors green-light every suicide. Having a disability alone would not qualify an individual under ELOA.

‘Assisted suicide laws hurt me’ 

Brianna Hammon, 38, wearing a tag saying ‘Do Not Euthanize’, an ironic riposte to her opponents

For Brianna Hammon, a 38-year-old with cerebral palsy, doctor-assisted suicide laws are one more nail in the coffin for Nevada’s disabled community.

For Hammon, most doctor’s appointments all-too-quickly become a macabre conversation about her thoughts about writing an ‘advance directive’ or ‘do-not-resuscitate’ order. MAiD laws, she says, further erode the value of her life.

‘It’s demoralizing to be constantly told that the disabled would be better off dead,’ her mother Deidre, 62, told DailyMail.com. ‘Having the state codifying an assisted-suicide law just sends that message harder.’

The Hammons run a library for disabled people in their native Reno. Brianna often sports dyed hair, a brightly-colored leather jacket and a lanyard tag saying ‘Do Not Euthanize’, an ironic riposte to her opponents.

Using a speech device, she advocates for the rights of disabled people and urges Nevada politicians to reject an assisted dying law, which was last proposed in 2021.

‘This bill has always been supported by wealthy, white rich Democrats, which really is appalling because they’re supposed to be our people. And they just don’t get it,’ said Deidre. 

Bottles of prescription medicines during an assisted suicide in 2016

Christopher, 60, is no fan of assisted dying laws. His dad endured ‘excruciating pain’ from lung cancer when in 2010 he decided to travel to Oregon to end his life, as MAiD was not then available in his native California.

Christopher says the life-ending decision, which was supported and even promoted by some relatives, ‘destroyed relationships’ and left kin having ‘zero contact’ with each other. As such, he wanted to keep his surname private.

Christopher’s dad, then aged 68, headed to Portland, Oregon, where he says Dr Nicholas Gideonse signed the papers and administered the pills, even though Oregon MAiD rules at the time did not cover non-residents.

‘I don’t condone what he did, but I understand why,’ said Christopher, a Catholic, who objects to assisted suicide on religious and moral grounds. ‘It takes away our human dignity. It’s like we’re just tossed in the trash can when we’re done,’ he said.

John B Kelly, 64, says assisted suicide rules directly hurt the disabled  

John B Kelly, 64, says the sledding accident in 1984 that left him paralyzed from the neck down may have been an unusual blessing, granting him new perspectives on life, friendships and humanity.

Since the accident, strangers and even relatives have suggested in stark language that he was ‘better off dead.’ But Kelly says there is life after quadriplegia and valuable relationships to be had.

With the correct kitchen setup, he can even sauté garlic at home, says the Bostonian, who heads the grassroots campaign Second Thoughts MA.

Assisted-dying rules, he says, are pernicious: the ultimate expression of how an affluent, able-bodied elite resents any supposed loss of autonomy and dignity, and carves out a legal get-out for its own benefit.

‘I attribute it to a very nasty streak of American ableism — If you’re not able to do every single thing for yourself, well, then you’re a burden, and you should get the hell out of here,’ said Kelly.

In the US, suicide drugs have already been doled out to those with diabetes and anorexia. This casts doubt on the value of maintaining decent healthcare for those, like himself, with disabilities who want to live, he added.

‘We’re trying to prevent Canada from coming to the US, and start killing us,’ he said.

Anita Cameron, 57, is glad her mother ignored her doctor’s ‘death sentence’

Anita Cameron, 57, rejoices how her mother, Alice Bozeman, ignored the doctor who in 2009 hinted that a medically-aided death may be best for an elderly woman with terminal lung disease.

Washington had just legalized assisted suicides. Bozeman’s doctor stressed that her condition would deteriorate quickly and ‘strongly hinted’ at the option of an assisted death.

‘He got as close to saying it as you can get without the words actually coming out of his mouth,’ Cameron told DailyMail.com.

‘But she wasn’t about to die by suicide. My mother went through some rough times, but always hung on to the fact that if she was going to die, she was going to die naturally.’

The gloomy six-month prognosis bears testament to how doctor’s estimates are a crap shoot. Bozeman, a mom-of-four, died in her native Colorado nearly 12 years later, after having seen new grandchildren born and married.

Her daughter now campaigns against MAiD laws. She suffers from multiple sclerosis and says that better medical care is the answer, not eliminating patients — which she says hits non-whites and the poor the hardest.

She worries about America’s pathway, with her home state, New York, and others moving toward passing their own doctor-assisted dying laws in the coming months.

‘I’m certainly afraid that we’re going to wind up in a situation like Canada,’ she said.