# Can Big Pharma kill the death penalty? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 24, 2013, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-big-pharma-kill-the-death-penalty/672150 "2013-10-24T19:32:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 11
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2013, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-big-pharma-kill-the-death-penalty/672150/11 "2013-10-24T21:48:11Z")
**Antibob** says it, almost. There are ten thousand ways to kill people. Anti-DPers have gotten the laws written so that only fresh, specially-compounded, specific substances can be used for executions… and guess what, all the stocks of those are now outdated and can’t be used. How sad. It’s not about the chemicals. It’s about the politics, and groups that use any tiny chiseling point to control a major issue. (I don’t think anyone really, really gives a shit about spotted owls or Mission Blue butterflies, for example; there are very close companion species to both. But protecting them protected the last stands of old-growth redwood in California and the Marin Headlands from development.) What needs to be done is to expand the legal list of lethal drugs to include ones that have other, legitimate purposes. Insulin overdose, for example. Anesthesia into the ground plane. Etc. Then it’s about the act, not the trivialities of who compounded what chemical. (Or molded the bullet.) --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-big-pharma-kill-the-death-penalty/672150)._