Health
MP who attempted suicide launches campaign against expanding euthanasia for mental illness
From LifeSiteNews
MP Andrew Lawton said he might be dead if a bill currently being debated in Canada to include mental illness as a condition for assisted suicide was the law when he tried to take his life.
A Conservative MP who almost died in a suicide attempt 15 years ago launched an initiative to help those struggling with mental illness choose life and to help stop a plan by the Canadian government to expand euthanasia to those with mental illness.
The initiative, led by newly elected Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) MP Andrew Lawton and called ‘I Got Better’: Stop MAID for Mental Illness, was launched Thursday.
“Fifteen years ago, I almost lost my life to suicide. It wasn’t my first suicide attempt, but it was by far the most serious. I intentionally overdosed on several medications and ended up on life support and in a coma for several weeks. This wasn’t a cry for help. I wanted to die,” Lawson said in a video posted to X.
Lawson noted how the changes coming in 2027 to Canada’s euthanasia laws, or “medical assistance in dying” (MAiD) – a euphemism for assisted suicide as it’s known — that someone like him experiencing what he suffered years ago “would be able to get a doctor to help them end their life.”
“Simply put, if the law on the books now were there 15 years ago, I’d probably be dead right now. What I went through didn’t happen overnight. Through much of my teenage years and into my early 20s, I battled severe depression. I would have good days and bad days, but I started to have more and more bad days,” he said.
Lawson observed how at a certain point in time he could not “take it anymore” and thus crafted a plan to end his life.
“This wasn’t a rash or impulsive decision. I scheduled it weeks out. Those closest to me had no idea what I was going through,” he said.
“I did have a support system I could have leaned on. I had plenty of opportunities to change my mind or seek help, but I didn’t. I was that committed. I was that stubborn. In my story and those of countless others, the desire to end my life was a symptom of my mental illness.”
Canada needs to protect vulnerable, says MP
As reported by LifeSiteNews, the Private Members Bill, C-218, or “An Act to amend the Criminal Code (medical assistance in dying [i.e., euthanasia]),” was introduced by CPC MP Tamara Jansen and passed its first reading on June 20.
LifeSiteNews reported on Bill C-218, noting that Jansen said allowing “medical assistance in dying” (MAiD) – a euphemism for assisted suicide – for those with mental illness is “not healthcare, that’s not compassion, it’s abandonment.”
“Mental illness is treatable. Recovery is possible, but only if we show up and help,” she told fellow MPs.
Jansen’s Bill C-218 reads, “This enactment amends the Criminal Code to provide that a mental disorder is not a grievous and irremediable medical condition for which a person could receive medical assistance in dying.”
Lawson said that Canada needs to make sure that people struggling with mental illness are given the “help” they need to stay alive.
“I’m proud to stand behind Bill C-218, a private member’s bill tabled by my colleague Tamara Jansen. If passed, this bill will ensure mental illness can’t be used as justification for someone to end their life with MAID,” he said.
Lawson warned that when it comes to suicide, being a “rational thinker” can be “even more dangerous as you convince yourself that suicide is a sensible or logical course of action, but it isn’t because it’s based on an inherently flawed belief that what you’re experiencing can never get better.”
“We can’t give up on each other. The pain that mental illness causes is real and it is hard, but it isn’t permanent. Bill C-218 is about ensuring we keep hope alive for people struggling with mental illness, that we give them a right to recover. I got better and others can too,” he said.
The Conservative Party has attempted to oppose the expansion of euthanasia for some time, but recent legislative attempts to stop the expansion outright, instead of just delaying it, such as through Bill C-314, have failed.
Assisted suicide was legalized by the Liberal government of former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in 2016.
Under the current law, assisted suicide is prohibited for minors and the mentally ill. Activists, however, have been pushing for these expansions with varying degrees of success.
In 2021, the Trudeau government expanded euthanasia from killing only “terminally ill” patients to allowing the chronically ill to qualify after the passage of Bill C-7. Since then, the government has sought to include those suffering solely from mental illness.
In February 2024 after pushback from pro-life, medical, and mental health groups as well as most of Canada’s provinces, the federal government delayed the mental illness expansion until 2027.
The expansion of euthanasia for the mentally ill is slated to become law in 2027 due to the passage of Bill C-7.
From HHS Secretary Robert F Kennedy’s Facebook Page
From the Brownstone Institute
Cigarettes kill nearly half a million Americans each year. Everyone knows it, including the Food and Drug Administration. Yet while the most lethal nicotine product remains on sale in every gas station, the FDA continues to block or delay far safer alternatives.
Nicotine pouches—small, smokeless packets tucked under the lip—deliver nicotine without burning tobacco. They eliminate the tar, carbon monoxide, and carcinogens that make cigarettes so deadly. The logic of harm reduction couldn’t be clearer: if smokers can get nicotine without smoke, millions of lives could be saved.
Sweden has already proven the point. Through widespread use of snus and nicotine pouches, the country has cut daily smoking to about 5 percent, the lowest rate in Europe. Lung-cancer deaths are less than half the continental average. This “Swedish Experience” shows that when adults are given safer options, they switch voluntarily—no prohibition required.
In the United States, however, the FDA’s tobacco division has turned this logic on its head. Since Congress gave it sweeping authority in 2009, the agency has demanded that every new product undergo a Premarket Tobacco Product Application, or PMTA, proving it is “appropriate for the protection of public health.” That sounds reasonable until you see how the process works.
Manufacturers must spend millions on speculative modeling about how their products might affect every segment of society—smokers, nonsmokers, youth, and future generations—before they can even reach the market. Unsurprisingly, almost all PMTAs have been denied or shelved. Reduced-risk products sit in limbo while Marlboros and Newports remain untouched.
Only this January did the agency relent slightly, authorizing 20 ZYN nicotine-pouch products made by Swedish Match, now owned by Philip Morris. The FDA admitted the obvious: “The data show that these specific products are appropriate for the protection of public health.” The toxic-chemical levels were far lower than in cigarettes, and adult smokers were more likely to switch than teens were to start.
The decision should have been a turning point. Instead, it exposed the double standard. Other pouch makers—especially smaller firms from Sweden and the US, such as NOAT—remain locked out of the legal market even when their products meet the same technical standards.
The FDA’s inaction has created a black market dominated by unregulated imports, many from China. According to my own research, roughly 85 percent of pouches now sold in convenience stores are technically illegal.
The agency claims that this heavy-handed approach protects kids. But youth pouch use in the US remains very low—about 1.5 percent of high-school students according to the latest National Youth Tobacco Survey—while nearly 30 million American adults still smoke. Denying safer products to millions of addicted adults because a tiny fraction of teens might experiment is the opposite of public-health logic.
There’s a better path. The FDA should base its decisions on science, not fear. If a product dramatically reduces exposure to harmful chemicals, meets strict packaging and marketing standards, and enforces Tobacco 21 age verification, it should be allowed on the market. Population-level effects can be monitored afterward through real-world data on switching and youth use. That’s how drug and vaccine regulation already works.
Sweden’s evidence shows the results of a pragmatic approach: a near-smoke-free society achieved through consumer choice, not coercion. The FDA’s own approval of ZYN proves that such products can meet its legal standard for protecting public health. The next step is consistency—apply the same rules to everyone.
Combustion, not nicotine, is the killer. Until the FDA acts on that simple truth, it will keep protecting the cigarette industry it was supposed to regulate.
Author
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