Elderly groups plan to make lethal pills

By Lindsay Murdoch

November 9, 2004

Groups of elderly people are planning to meet across Australia to make their own suicide pills, defying state and territory legislature outlawing euthanasia.

Euthanasia campaigner Philip Nitschke revealed yesterday that the first group, comprising people mainly from Melbourne and Sydney, would meet secretly in a remote spot in NSW in March.

He said participants planned to use substances available over the counter to make their pills on a three-day weekend before passing on what they did to other groups.

The first group includes people with the expertise to make lethal pills, and who have already started gathering ingredients.

Dr Nitschke said the euthanasia group Exit International had been "stampeded" with requests from people to join groups to make their own pills as a way to skirt existing laws.

Federal Parliament is expected to pass laws in the second half of next year that provide fines of up to $120,000 for the offence. Existing laws already provide penalties of up to life imprisonment for advising, counselling or helping anybody to kill themselves, although suicide is not a crime in Australia. Dr Nitschke said that although Exit had been telling its members how the "do-it-yourself" groups would work, it had to distance itself from the pill-making to avoid prosecution.

Dr Nitschke also revealed in Darwin, where Exit is based, Australians were frequently going to Mexico to buy lethal doses of Nembutal, widely used as a sleeping pill in the 1950s, which they brought back, despite it being a prohibited import.