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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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 Posted: Fri Apr 08, 2011 2:38 am Post subject: |
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Indian Company Ends Sale of Lethal-Injection Drug to the U.S.
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The controversy over lethal injection as a method of execution escalated today when a pharmaceutical company in India announced that it would no longer supply a crucial drug to death-penalty states.
The company's decision was a major victory for opponents of the death penalty in the U.S., which had lobbied the company and Indian authorities, and leaves capital-punishment states and the federal government with no immediate supplier of the drug, sodium thiopental, an anesthetic.
The Indian company, Kayem, has already sold thiopental to Nebraska and South Dakota, and had been approached by 13 other states to buy it, the company's managing director, Navneet Verma said in a telephone interview from Mumbai, where the company is located.
Earlier today, the company announced on its website that it would no longer sell the drug for lethal-injection purposes:
In view of the sensitivity involved with sale of our Thiopental Sodium to various Jails/Prisons in USA and as alleged to be used for the purpose of Lethal Injection, we voluntary declare that we as Indian Pharma Dealer who cherish the Ethos of Hinduism ( A believer even in non-livings as the creation of God) refrain ourselves in selling this drug where the purpose is purely for Lethal Injection and its misuse.
Mr. Verma said in the telephone interview he had not been aware that the drug was being used for executions until he received a letter from Clive Stafford Smith, director of Reprieve, a British human rights organization that has been at the forefront of an effort to block companies from selling sodium thiopental for execution purposes.
Mr. Stafford Smith wrote, in February, that perhaps in making the sales Kayem, a wholesaler, had believed the drugs were going to be used "only to help treat prisoners not to kill them." If that were the case, Mr. Stafford Smith suggested that Kayem might want to join other pharmaceutical companies that "have made very strong statements condemning the use of life-saving drugs in the killing of prisoners."
Yesterday, Indian authorities visited Kayem's offices in Mumbai, and took records pertaining to sales of sodium thiopental, Mr. Verma said in the telephone interview. With that, he had decided it was time to cease sales to American prison authorities.
Mr. Verma said that he had sold the drug to Nebraska, in December, for $3.50 a vial. (The cost to him is $1.00 a vial, he said.) Three months later, in selling to South Dakota, he jacked up the price to $10.00 a vial. He said he had done this to make the cost prohibitive so that states wouldn't buy it for executions.
(He said that he also sold sodium thiopental to the ministry of defense in Angola, for about $2.00 a vial. He assumes they are using it as an anesthetic when operating on wounded soldiers.)
In light of today's action by Kayem, it is not clear where states will get sodium thiopental, which is the first of three drugs administered to the condemned man after he is strapped on the gurney. The only American company, Hospira, ceased production last year after experiencing manufacturing problems. Italian and British companies have been barred from exporting the drug for execution purposes by their respective governments. The European Union bans capital punishment, and the Austrian and German governments have told Reprieve that they will not allow companies to export thiopental to the U.S. for use in executions.
Without a reliable supply of thiopental, states are turning to an alternative drug: pentobarbital. It can be used as an anesthetic or as a single death-inducing drug in lieu of the three-drug cocktail.
Lawyers for death-row inmates, and death penalty opponents more generally, have launched a campaign against its use. Pentobarbital is used for putting animals to sleep, they note, and even then, states place restrictions on how veterinarians may use it.
At the moment, the only supplier of pentobarbital for executions is a company in Denmark, Lundbeck, and anti-death penalty activists have launched an aggressive campaign to persuade the company to cease exports, as Kayem now has of thiopental. |
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Steelrails
Joined: 12 Mar 2009
Location: Earth, Solar System
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| Posted: Fri Apr 08, 2011 6:31 am Post subject: |
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The death penalty is worthwhile only when applied in a brutally oppressive manner. There are isolated times for that, mostly involving war or extreme social anarchy, but not in stable society.
I might consider it for traffickers of Meth and Heroin, but there are so many "legal" applications of variants of those drugs that that would be a legal mess and not worth it. Certainly it would only work in a small country like Singapore. |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Fri Apr 08, 2011 6:41 am Post subject: |
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| Steelrails wrote: |
| The death penalty is worthwhile only when applied in a brutally oppressive manner. There are isolated times for that, mostly involving war or extreme social anarchy, but not in stable society. |
Elaborate. Why in those times would it be worthwhile?
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| I might consider it for traffickers of Meth and Heroin, but there are so many "legal" applications of variants of those drugs that that would be a legal mess and not worth it. Certainly it would only work in a small country like Singapore. |
If people want to use or sell drugs, let them. That being said, I do think that if you're going to have an effective no-drug policy, it has to be as draconian as Singapore's. |
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Sergio Stefanuto
Joined: 14 May 2009
Location: UK
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| Posted: Fri Apr 08, 2011 8:25 am Post subject: |
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| Steelrails wrote: |
| I might consider it for traffickers of Meth and Heroin |
I can think of nothing more obscene than executing those who strive to satisfy the demands of others. |
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Steelrails
Joined: 12 Mar 2009
Location: Earth, Solar System
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| Posted: Fri Apr 08, 2011 12:45 pm Post subject: |
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| Elaborate. Why in those times would it be worthwhile? |
Rape and/or pillaging by a soldier under your command would be cause for on the spot execution. Insubordination beyond simple refusal to obey orders, but actively going against them in an extreme manner during wartime. War causes soldiers to do crazy things.
Anarchic civil disturbance behavior, of a prolonged nature, such as firebombing and sacking by mobs would be cause for using deadly force to restore order.
Not talking civil disobedience rioting, just out and out mob behavior.
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| If people want to use or sell drugs, let them |
Hey I'm all for most drugs being legal, but having dealt with more than a few methheads and junkies in my lifetime, my previously libertarian attitude to that changed. All drugs are not the same.
But again, with prescriptive uses out there for amphetamines and painkillers, the legal factors would make said executions a nightmare. How can you differentiate between a "Heroin Dealer" and a pharmacist? |
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Kimbop
Joined: 31 Mar 2008
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| Posted: Fri Apr 08, 2011 1:27 pm Post subject: |
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| Sergio Stefanuto wrote: |
| Steelrails wrote: |
| I might consider it for traffickers of Meth and Heroin |
I can think of nothing more obscene than executing those who strive to satisfy the demands of others. |
What if the "demand" to be "satisfied" is someone's quest to blow a hydrogen bomb at a jam-packed wrigley field? I'd strap that perp to old sparky.
This guy too:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-20024527-504083.html
He doesn't care. He's evil. Our world is worse-off with his existence. Like John Malkovich, I really don't care if psychopathic murderers are dead or alive as long as they're out of the picture:
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"America's left wing wants criminals coddled, and no one wants anyone punished," he says. "I would have no problem pushing the switch while having dinner."
Malkovich went on to tweak the anti-capital-punishment crowd further by saying, "We're all going to die, so it should just be called the early death penalty." |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Fri Apr 08, 2011 3:14 pm Post subject: |
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| Steelrails wrote: |
Not talking civil disobedience rioting, just out and out mob behavior.
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| If people want to use or sell drugs, let them |
Hey I'm all for most drugs being legal, but having dealt with more than a few methheads and junkies in my lifetime, my previously libertarian attitude to that changed. All drugs are not the same. |
So why not punish the relevant underlying conduct, the horrible stuff they do while on drugs, rather than the consumption itself?
The answer is, the authorities want to get the bad guys on absolutely anything they can. The connection between drug use and other crime is not tenuous, but it shouldn't become an excuse keeping our society from prosecuting the right offenses. |
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Space Bar
Joined: 20 Oct 2010
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| Posted: Fri Apr 08, 2011 6:27 pm Post subject: |
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| Steelrails wrote: |
The death penalty is worthwhile only when applied in a brutally oppressive manner. There are isolated times for that, mostly involving war or extreme social anarchy, but not in stable society.
I might consider it for traffickers of Meth and Heroin, but there are so many "legal" applications of variants of those drugs that that would be a legal mess and not worth it. |
Except that it would not be Constitutional. You cannot execute someone who has not taken a life himself (except for maybe treason, right, Kuros?)
Haven't we shredded our Constitution enough already?
Ooh, he smuggled in a Blackberry and posted pics to Facebook! Plus he's drinking and getting high! He's going to jail! |
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Steelrails
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