Pfizer Bans Use of Its Drugs in Executions

Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said that Pfizer’s new move is an affirmation that the company does not want its products to be used for death penalty executions.

Pfizer’s move comes after more than 20 USA and European drugmakers took similar steps.

Specifically, Pfizer said it was imposing restrictions on wholesalers, distributors and direct purchasers of seven drugs that are used or considered for use in lethal injection protocols, barring these buyers from reselling them to correctional institutions for lethal injections.

“It underscores that (Pfizer) along with the rest of the pharmaceutical community is committed to ensuring medicines that are made to save lives are not misused by states to kill prisoners”, he told Sky News.

The mounting difficulty in obtaining lethal drugs has already caused states to furtively scramble for supplies.

Pfizer indicated that it will start restricting the distribution of seven drugs used by some states for death penalty executions. We strongly object to the use of any of our products in the lethal injection process for capital punishment.

Lethal injection is the primary means of execution in all 31 death-penalty states.

These products include pancuronium bromide, potassium chloride, propofol, midazolam, hydromorphone, rocuronium bromide and vecuronium bromide, all of which are use in making lethal injections.

Megan McCracken, a death penalty expert from University of California, Berkeley, said the company’s decision is significant.

Because states don’t reveal everything about executions, companies such as Pfizer may not even know if their distribution contracts have been violated, he said.

These tests, however, don’t always go smoothly, and in 2014, there were four botched executions.

Campaigners cite cases like that of double murderer Joseph Wood, who lay gasping and gulping for almost two hours before he died after a lethal injection in 2014.

Official sources for the necessary drugs has reduced in recent years, leading some U.S. states to turn to other drugs or other methods ofexecution, such as the electric chair or firing squad.

This file photo shows the execution chamber at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Huntsville Unit in Huntsville, Texas, where convicted death row inmates are executed by lethal injection.

According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the racial ratio of victims of the death penalty in the USA has been striking since the revival of the practice, with the penalty being disproportionately imposed on blacks and ethnic minorities.

Lawmakers hoped that, by providing drug vendors anonymity so they would not be harassed by death-penalty opponents, the state would develop a stable source of execution drugs.