Colorado’s latest End-of-Life Options Act 2025 report has been released, showing prescriptions for assisted suicide medicine hit a new high of 580 in 2025. These latest figures mark a 12.4% increase on the previous year and part of a steady climb since 2017 (cumulative 2,580 prescriptions).
The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment also received death certificates for 512 individuals who had been prescribed assisted-suicide medications. However, the state does not possess definitive information regarding how many of these individuals actually ingested the drugs. Some may have succumbed to cancer or other illnesses, while others may have died due to different causes. The report does not offer a definitive count of deaths directly attributable to the lethal medications.
“Deaths may have been due to ingestion of aid-in-dying medication, the underlying terminal illness or condition, or other causes,” the report says.
Colorado voters approved Proposition 106 in November 2016, and the law took effect in December 2016. The law allows for Colorado residents who meet the 6-month prognosis criteria to request and self-administer lethal drugs to end their lives. In 2024, Gov. Jared Polis signed legislation expanding it to allow non-physicians to prescribe lethal drugs for assisted suicide, reduced the interval between oral requests from 15 days to 7 days and allowed certain waiting-period requirements, like the 48-hour waiting period to access lethal drugs, to be waived when a patient is imminently dying.
The number of prescriptions for lethal drugs each year has increased by roughly 83% over the past three years. In 2022, there were 317 prescriptions, increasing to 398 in 2023 and to 516 in 2024. Colorado’s Department of Public Health & Environment reported that in 2025, pharmacies dispensed these drugs to 261 patients. Although more prescriptions were issued in 2025, the number of patients receiving the drugs was significantly lower than the 315 patients reported in 2024.
The gap raised concerns for Alex Schadenberg, executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition. “An investigation needs to be done to identify what is actually happening,” Schadenberg wrote for LifeNews. Schadenberg asked if certain pharmacies did not report the drugs or if the state’s records were missing information.
Colorado’s latest figures show continued growth in the number of prescriptions issued since the law’s enactment. What is often presented as a rare option for a small number of terminally ill people can, over time, become more widely used and more broadly accessible. Critics argue that Colorado’s growing prescription numbers, combined with legislative changes expanding access, demonstrate how assisted-suicide laws tend to expand in volume, scope and social acceptance once established.
*Written by Family First staff writers*
