Now that states are having a harder time getting the drugs they need for lethal injections, Ian Steadman reports that they are trying out new drug combinations, some of which are completely untested:
On October 15, for the 1986 rape and murder of 21-year-old Angela Crowley, Florida executed 51-year-old William Happ using the sedative midazolam hydrochloride. Allen Nicklasson, 41, was executed for murder on December 11 in Missouri using pentobarbital, after a temporary stay of execution in October after controversy over the alternative drug that the state wanted to use—the general anaesthetic propofol, which is similar to valium, and which has never been used to execute anyone before. The state refused to comment on who manufactured the pentobarbital used, or where it was bought. … Several states, led by Ohio, have since 2009 been moving away from the three-drug cocktail towards simply using pentobarbital on its own—it can cause the body’s lungs to stop working when given in high enough doses. However, the difficulty in procurring even that single drug means that not only are alternative drugs being used without much knowledge of their efficacy, prisons are turning to unregulated “compound pharmacies”. These are where two or more other drugs are mixed to approximate the effects of another drug—a process that is unreliable at best, and which has led to outbreaks of diseases like meningitis in areas where the method has been tried with prescription drugs.
(There’s further irony here that the nation most responsible for the international War on Drugs is now forced to seek out an alternative dealer—one which peddles an inferior-quality product, with unknown risks attached—now that its preferred brand is unavailable.)
The Dish 