Associated Press on New Law Passed to Block Concert Suicide:
The St. Petersburg city council passed a law Monday designed to scuttle a rock group's plans to feature an onstage suicide.
The hard-rock band Hell on Earth had said that a suicide by a terminally ill person would take place during a concert Saturday to raise awareness of right-to-die issues.
Let me start by pointing out that I find this public suicide concept disturbing and tasteless. That said, the knee-jerk reaction of the City Council is glossing over and ignoring the larger issues concerning self-termination rights for the terminally ill which delves into the realm of self-ownership of one's body and alternative pain relief strategies opposed by drug war apologists and their jack-booted cousins. We won't allow terminally ill individuals in extreme pain or suffering to take their own lives, then we make it illegal for them to use cheap pain relief like medicinal marijuana which, in certain cases, can make their final time a little easier by making some FDA approved methods of disease treatment (like glaucoma or chemotherapy treatments) much more bearable. Further, we are now jailing doctors for prescribing TOO MUCH pain relief medication. Huh?! It seems like we are in an unofficial war with the dying.