{"id":73574,"date":"2016-05-16T12:00:51","date_gmt":"2016-05-16T11:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=73574"},"modified":"2016-05-15T14:50:32","modified_gmt":"2016-05-15T13:50:32","slug":"pfizer-cuts-states-off-from-execution-drugs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/05\/pfizer-cuts-states-off-from-execution-drugs\/","title":{"rendered":"Pfizer Cuts States Off from Execution Drugs"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>

The lethal injection facility at San Quentin State Prison in California.
CREDIT: AP Photo\/Eric Risberg<\/p><\/div>\n

14 May 2016 – <\/em>After pharmaceutical company Pfizer announced<\/a> on Friday [13 May] that it will clamp down on the distribution of its drugs so that they can no longer be used in executions, any state that wants to use lethal injection will now have to resort to getting them on underground markets.<\/p>\n

Pfizer announced that it will restrict seven products \u2014 pancuronium bromide, potassium chloride, propofol, midazolam, hydromorphone, rocuronium bromide, and vecuronium bromide \u2014 that are used in executions. Those products will now only be available to a select group of wholesalers, distributors, and direct purchasers who verify that they won\u2019t resell them to correctional institutions for executions, and any government entity that wants to buy them has to certify that they will only be used for patient care and will not be resold.<\/p>\n

Pfizer says it will \u201cconsistently monitor\u201d the seven drugs to root out any noncompliance and modify its policies if need be to make sure that they aren\u2019t used in lethal injections.<\/p>\n

\u201cPfizer makes its products to enhance and save the lives of the patients we serve,\u201d the company said in its statement<\/a> announcing the new policies. \u201cConsistent with these values, Pfizer strongly objects to the use of its products as lethal injections for capital punishment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Without supply from Pfizer, states that use lethal injection now have no open-market source of getting drugs. \u201cWith Pfizer\u2019s announcement, all F.D.A.-approved manufacturers of any potential execution drug have now blocked their sale for this purpose,\u201d Maya Foa, director of human rights group Reprieve\u2019s death penalty team, told the New York Times<\/a>. \u201cExecuting states must now go underground if they want to get hold of medicines for use in lethal injection.\u201d<\/p>\n

The announcement comes after more than 20 drug companies in the United States and Europe had similarly restricted products that are used in lethal injection. It also comes after Pfizer acquired Hospira, which makes drugs used in executions and had tried but failed to prevent their use in state prisons. Its products were used, for example, in the high-profile, prolonged execution of Ohio inmate Dennis McGuire<\/a>, which took nearly 25 minutes and appeared to cause him suffering.<\/p>\n

Thirty-one states<\/a> still authorize the death penalty, and lethal injection is the primary method. But these states have faced increasing road blocks in their attempts to access the drugs since 2009, when technical production problems shut down the only federally approved factory making sodium thiopental, a barbiturate given to render inmates unconscious before the lethal drugs are administered. Since then, manufacturers have increasingly sought to avoid being associated with executions and barred corrections facilities from buying their drugs.<\/p>\n

In response, states have experimented with new combinations of drugs and tried to import them from other countries or use straw buyers to access them. Some have bought drugs from compounding pharmacies that aren\u2019t regulated by the FDA. Others have even considered turning to the use of the electric chair<\/a>, firing squads<\/a>, and gas chambers.<\/p>\n

Others, including Arizona, Oklahoma, and Ohio, have had to delay executions for months at a time because of drug shortages or injunctions over their methods.<\/p>\n

Amid these challenges, capitol punishment has been on the decline<\/a>. Last year just six states performed executions \u2014 the bulk of them in one state, Texas \u2014 and killed 28 people in total, a 70 percent decrease from a peak of 98 people in 1999.<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 thinkprogress.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

14 May 2016 – After pharmaceutical company Pfizer announced on Friday [13 May] that it will clamp down on the distribution of its drugs so that they can no longer be used in executions, any state that wants to use lethal injection will now have to resort to getting them on underground markets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anglo-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73574"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73574\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}