July 6, 2015
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Media Contact:
Steve Buckstein
503-242-0900
Oregon Right to Try Bill Unanimously Passes the House and Senate
PORTLAND, Ore. – Oregon’s Right to Try bill, HB 2300 B, passed 29-0 in the Senate and was re-passed with some restrictive amendments in the House by 60-0 last week. It now goes to Governor Kate Brown’s desk for her signature. The law will give some terminally ill Oregonians the Right to Try experimental drugs and devices not yet approved by the FDA.
Cascade Policy Institute founder Steve Buckstein noted, “The final bill is more restrictive than similar statutes in 21 other states (with its 18-year-old minimum age limit and its six-months to expected death definition of terminal illness), but it’s a good start and hopefully can be expanded in the future to cover children and people who have terminal illnesses such as ALS where patients may live for a number of years.”
Buckstein thanked House Health Care Committee Chair Mitch Greenlick (D), committee member and work group leader Knute Buehler, MD (R), and Senate Health Care Committee Chair Laurie Monnes Anderson (D) for all their hard work on the bill. He noted that these three legislators started working on this legislation before the session even started, and stuck with it all the way to final unanimous passage in both houses.
Buckstein also thanked the Goldwater Institute of Arizona for pioneering the Right to Try concept around the country and for its help in Oregon. He also thanked Diego Morris, the Arizona teenager who had to move to London for treatment approved in Europe but not in the United States when he contracted terminal osteo sarcoma at age eleven. The treatment was successful and Diego is now cancer free. Diego and his mother Paulina visited the Oregon Capitol in February to make their case for allowing terminally ill Oregonians the right to try experimental drugs. When asked by a reporter what he would say to critics of the Oregon Right to Try bill, he looked up at her and said, “Wait until they find themselves in my situation, and then ask them.”
Buckstein concluded, “This truly bipartisan effort resulted in a bill that could literally mean the difference between life and death for some terminally ill Oregonians. I’m proud of the work Cascade Policy Institute did to promote the Right to Try concept and bill in Oregon, and look forward to Governor Brown signing the bill so it can take effect at the beginning of 2016.”
Cascade Policy Institute is a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy research and educational organization that focuses on state and local issues in Oregon. Cascade’s mission is to develop and promote public policy alternatives that foster individual liberty, personal responsibility, and economic opportunity.
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