Arkansas went on a capital punishment binge recently. They tried to execute eight death row inmates in eleven days because some of the drugs they use were going to expire and they may not be able to get more. Apparently, the companies that make the drugs don’t want them used for lethal injections.
All of the major manufacturers of injectable midazolam have said they do not want their drugs used in executions and most of them have created control systems, including contracts with third-party drug distributors prohibiting the sale of their drugs for use in lethal injections.
Midazolam is a sedative, and if the manufacturers are uncomfortable with this use then as private companies, they should be free to choose with whom they do business. But here’s a curious question? Do any of these same companies make other drugs that might be used for assisted suicide?
Currently, in Oregon, The lethal dose prescribed is typically 9 g of secobarbital in capsules or 10 g of pentobarbital liquid, to be consumed at one time.
Akorn Pharmaceuticals, one of the companies with the moral compass when it comes to midazolam, and capital punishment makes Pentobarbital. I can’t say what their moral compass says about it ending up in the hands of third-party drug distributors and then doctors in Oregon or if they would or would not sell it to prison doctors in Arkansas, but that is a curious question. Here’s another one.
What happens to the debate about pharmaceutical execution if the people against the use of drugs in prisons are the same individuals who favor their use for assisted suicide?
Some would say death is death and killing is killing, so we’re either haggling over semantics or delivery or a bit of both. But if you oppose capital punishment then it makes no difference how but where and why. I suppose the same can be said for end-of-life choices. But both are managed and regulated by the state, which ought to scare more people than it does which is, itself, scary.
As for Arkansas, if it doesn’t want to go back to hanging, firing squad, electrocution, or an endless loop of Hillary Clinton Campaign Speeches (the cruelest and most unusual form of punishment in the lot) as forms of capital punishment, why not change the law? Death row inmates can end their lives (with the assistance of a prison physicians if that makes anyone feel better) with secobarbital, the medication most commonly prescribed for physician-assisted suicide in Oregon, followed (of course) by pentobarbital.
Would Akron pharmaceuticals be able to make a moral argument against such use? It would be interesting to watch, not that this seems likely.
But then, were just killing time here and Arkansas could always look to India, where there are approved manufacturers of Midazolam and pentobarbital.
Secobarbital (Seconal), initially licensed by Eli Lily, has only one approved US supplier. I don’t think they have a moral objection to anything. When Valeant Pharmaceuticals secured the rights to Seconal in 2015, they doubled the price from $1,500 per 100 capsules to $3,000.
And no we’ve got another curious question.
Shouldn’t the pro-assisted suicide crowd should start screaming about making pharmaceutical suicide unaffordable to the most vulnerable, leaving them to suffer through age-old “remedies” like overdoses, automobile exhaust naps in the family garage, or the ever popular gunshot to the head? All moral conundrums in their own right and all less convenient and a bit more messy than physician prescribed drugs, but it’s about dignity, right? Death is after all the point.
A dignity denied the victims of inmates on death row without any consideration whatsoever by their executioners.
