It has emerged that the largest U.S. pharmaceutical company, Pfizer, recently took steps to prevent its drugs being used in lethal injections. Effective immediately, Pfizer will closely screen and restrict the wholesale distribution of seven products that can be used for lethal injection, demanding that companies pledge not to resell them to corrections agencies. “Pfizer strongly objects to the use of its products as lethal injections for capital punishment”.
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The move reportedly shuts off the last remaining open market source of drugs used in executions in the US. Some have covertly bought supplies from compounding pharmacies while others, including Arizona, Oklahoma and OH, have delayed executions for months or longer because of drug shortages or legal issues tied to injection procedures.
So the company is “enforcing a distribution restriction for specific products that have been part of, or considered by some states for their lethal injection protocols”. It was operated by Hospira, a drug device company recently acquired by Pfizer.
Maya Foa, director of the death-penalty team for Reprieve, a human-rights group, also said Pfizer’s move was important. Some have been forced to delay executions, while others have approved alternative methods, including the firing squad, the electric chair and the gas chamber.
Before Missouri put to death a prisoner on Wednesday, for example, it refused to say in court whether the lethal barbiturate it used, pentobarbital, was produced by a compounding pharmacy or a licensed manufacturer.
Pfizer is a big drug company that people love to hate.
The decision by the pharmaceutical giant was first revealed by the New York Times.
“It is something we used to be able to know, but now it is increasingly different”, said Megan McCracken, a lawyer with the Death Penalty Clinic at the University of California at Berkeley’s law school.
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“They want their medicines to be life-saving”, she added.
