The death of 31-year-old Eileen Mihich in a Portland hotel room last March has become a stark indictment of the nation's assisted suicide laws. Found with an empty bottle of poison pills prescribed for physician-assisted suicide, Mihich's case reveals how easily the system can be exploited by those who don't qualify.
Mihich obtained the lethal medication from a pharmacy in Mill Creek, Washington, despite meeting none of the legal requirements. She was not terminally ill, had not consulted a single practitioner, suffered from serious mental illness that likely impaired her judgment, and was not a Washington resident. A year after her family filed a formal complaint with the Washington Department of Health, they have received no explanation for how their loved one accessed these deadly drugs.
This incident underscores a pattern activists have long warned about: the gradual erosion of safeguards originally promised by proponents of assisted suicide. Oregon, the first state to legalize the practice, assured the public that cases like Mihich's would be impossible. Yet the very first woman to die under Oregon's law was pushed through despite likely ineligibility, and a string of similar abuses have followed.
Outside the U.S., the situation appears even more alarming. Canadian media recently reported that an 81-year-old woman was offered state-assisted death for back pain. In the U.S., bills to legalize assisted suicide are active in 13 states, while two others are considering removing existing protections.
Mihich's method was disturbingly simple and could work in any of the 13 states where the practice is legal. She knew she didn't meet Oregon's eligibility criteria, so she found a doctor's publicly available National Provider Identifier, forged a prescription using a spoofed email address, and submitted it to a pharmacy that accepted it without verification.
An investigation by The Atlantic revealed that the pharmacy violated Washington law, which requires physician requests for suicide drugs to be sent via electronic medical record, fax, mail, or hand delivery. Mihich claimed her fax machine was broken and asked to submit the form by email; the pharmacy simply replied, “Okay.” Even if she had used a fax machine, the fake prescription would likely have gone undetected due to lax verification practices.
Accountability for abuse remains anathema to state suicide protocols. While hospitals routinely conduct morbidity and mortality reviews, the prescription of lethal poisons for patients is largely unpoliced. Required reports are frequently missing: Washington alone had nearly 200 missing physician forms and 75 missing patient consent forms in 2024, meaning authorities have no idea if patients voluntarily requested death, were of sound mind, or had a terminal diagnosis. Psychiatric screenings are virtually nonexistent, occurring in less than 1 percent of cases.
This lack of oversight extends beyond individual states. Washington's Department of Health has stopped producing legally required public reports. New Mexico and Montana have never released any data. Hawaii has downgraded its reporting standards, and Washington, D.C., has failed to produce an annual report for several years.
Eileen Mihich's family continues to mourn, while the advocates who promised guardrails, transparency, and accountability have delivered none. Her death is the inevitable consequence of laws that classify certain individuals as worthy of suicide. She needed help; instead, the state effectively handed her a death sentence. Tightening the loopholes she exploited and imposing a moratorium on further expansions of assisted suicide laws are essential steps to honor her memory and prevent future tragedies.
