# How can there be a shortage of execution drugs? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 21, 2014, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-there-be-a-shortage-of-execution-drugs/684229 "2014-03-21T14:18:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2014, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-there-be-a-shortage-of-execution-drugs/684229/21 "2014-03-21T17:00:31Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > Yeah, the same companies that can’t spare stockholder profits for diseases killing an insufficient number of people much larger than the total number of LI executions. Real life is, unfortunately, a little more complicated than that. But most people would reasonably feel it makes a difference if your product is deliberately being used to kill people. ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2014, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-there-be-a-shortage-of-execution-drugs/684229/22 "2014-03-21T17:02:59Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Might there not be rules against a pharmacist _deliberately_ concocting medicines for the purpose of killing humans? Presumably the state can set the rules for its own pharmacists, though. State licensing could require a pharmacist to dispense as requested any and all drugs permitted by federal or state law, and specifically disallow a conscience-related exclusion. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2014, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-there-be-a-shortage-of-execution-drugs/684229/23 "2014-03-21T17:12:49Z")
The Hippocratic Oath requires that a doctor not harm anyone or give poison to anyone. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2014, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-there-be-a-shortage-of-execution-drugs/684229/24 "2014-03-21T17:29:42Z")
> [@Tom\_Tildrum](#): > > Legislators in several states have begun [considering](http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/executions-could-go-back-gas-chamber-electric-chair) a return to earlier methods. Actually, this begs the question of not adopting a method that doesn’t require complex pharmaceuticals, elaborate execution devices (e.g. the electric chair), or other systems of execution that are unnecessarily messy or traumatic. Simply filling a sealed chamber with pure nitrogen would cause the occupant to suffer from hypoxia and then fatal anoxia with no pain or even awareness, and if properly managed would pose minimal hazard or cost to bystanders. Execution methods in the United States range from the bizarrely complicated to hideously painful. I personally don’t think execution should be used (on strictly a pragmatic basis; I think there are plenty of people who would do best in this world by leaving it, but I have little faith in juries to make fair decisions in irrevocable judgment, and the cost of supporting automatic appeals alone is greater than life imprisonment) but if we are going to execute people then let’s do it as humanely as possible. > [@kayaker](#): > > I wonder if arms manufacturers would similarly object to their products being used for firing squads? Arms manufacturer’s make weapons specficially designed to injure or kill via propelling a slug of metal at high velocity. Their use in warfare, defense, and execution is not really a negative from a publicity standpoint, except the people who are inherently against those actions. Pharmaceutical companies make drugs (ostensibly) designed specifically to treat or cure medical conditions. They quite understandably don’t want to be associated with execution or misuse, which is why they do a lot of human testing under the table in Africa where misuse is poorly documented and liability is limited. I personally think that the arms industry as a whole is more ethical than big phrama (at least they’re honest) but if I were running a pharmaceutical company I wouldn’t want to make “execution drugs” either. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Antinor01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecae2f/32.png) [@Antinor01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Antinor01)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2014, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-there-be-a-shortage-of-execution-drugs/684229/25 "2014-03-21T17:30:52Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > The Hippocratic Oath requires that a doctor not harm anyone or give poison to anyone. I guess botox is right out then. But really, the Oath isn’t even given by every school and has never in US history been a legally binding thing anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Steely\_Dan\_Fan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9de053/32.png) [@Steely\_Dan\_Fan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steely_Dan_Fan)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2014, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-there-be-a-shortage-of-execution-drugs/684229/26 "2014-03-21T17:34:58Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > Because then the anti-DP groups would sue you and try to get your license revoked so you couldn’t be a pharmacist. They would also claim that any drug that didn’t come from a pharmaceutical company constituted cruel and unusual punishment. > > They will do anything and everything they can think of to interfere with the execution. It’s what they do. > > Regards, > Shodan And good for them! ---
**Author:** ![BrotherCadfael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@BrotherCadfael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrotherCadfael)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2014, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-there-be-a-shortage-of-execution-drugs/684229/27 "2014-03-21T18:15:08Z")
> [@kayaker](#): > > The label states, “For use in animals only” (or something similar). It _can’t_ be used in humans. Yeah, it might make them sick or something. ---
**Author:** ![BrotherCadfael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@BrotherCadfael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrotherCadfael)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2014, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-there-be-a-shortage-of-execution-drugs/684229/28 "2014-03-21T18:16:41Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > The Hippocratic Oath requires that a doctor not harm anyone or give poison to anyone. I seem to recall it (at least at one point) also prohibited procuring an abortion… ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2014, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-there-be-a-shortage-of-execution-drugs/684229/29 "2014-03-21T18:17:11Z")
That’s what happens when a court rules that killing people isn’t cruel and unusual if you do it in a certain way. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2014, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-there-be-a-shortage-of-execution-drugs/684229/30 "2014-03-21T18:23:43Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > Not a particularly good analogy, IMO. > > Regards, > Shodan Does your problem with the analogy go any deeper than, “I approve of one of those things, and disapprove of the other”? ---
**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:** [March 21, 2014, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-there-be-a-shortage-of-execution-drugs/684229/31 "2014-03-21T18:27:47Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > Real life is, unfortunately, a little more complicated than that. But most people would reasonably feel it makes a difference if your product is deliberately being used to kill people. Perhaps. But then you have the problem of requiring absolutely to-the-letter pharmacological compounding and QC for something intended to be lethal. Same game, different square: any toehold to gain the same advantage as a full-face argument. > [@ITR\_champion](#): > > The Hippocratic Oath requires that a doctor not harm anyone or give poison to anyone. The Hippocratic Oath is a voluntary, optional tradition as binding as the Pledge of Allegiance. I don’t know why people think it’s some legal component of medical practice. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2014, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-there-be-a-shortage-of-execution-drugs/684229/32 "2014-03-21T18:28:59Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > Perhaps. But then you have the problem of requiring absolutely to-the-letter pharmacological compounding and QC for something intended to be lethal. Same game, different square: any toehold to gain the same advantage as a full-face argument. That’s a separate issue from the one you were just talking about. ---
**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:** [March 21, 2014, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-there-be-a-shortage-of-execution-drugs/684229/33 "2014-03-21T18:31:05Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > That’s a separate issue from the one you were just talking about. It’s of a piece with the “any barrier” arguments, and not entirely different from the justifications pharma providers use to avoid the issue. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2014, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-there-be-a-shortage-of-execution-drugs/684229/34 "2014-03-21T18:35:09Z")
I’m not sure what this has to do with the complaint about drug companies objecting to making lethal injections while they make treatments for some diseases and not others. ---
**Author:** ![lost4life](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c4cdca/32.png) [@lost4life](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lost4life)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2014, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-there-be-a-shortage-of-execution-drugs/684229/35 "2014-03-21T18:36:53Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > I’ve commented before that some of these drugs were originally made by “chemists” (the old term for what we’d today call a pharmacist or specifically a compounding pharmacist) in back room labs at the rear of their shops. I’m not sure why a state department of prisons doesn’t just post a pharmacist position and have them do compounding on the side as needed. It’d be a small amount of work per year, and I imagine with prison hospitals and such there might be a need for prison pharmacists in any case? > > My grandfather was a pharmacist from the old days and I knew he used to do all kinds of actual drug making. Is that not part of the pharmacy curriculum any longer? By the time I was born and knew him he had transitioned more to a business-owner role, but we have photos of him working in his shop back in the 20s and such making stuff. Heck, just send them over to Gower’s Drug Store. He’ll mix them up something good. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2014, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-there-be-a-shortage-of-execution-drugs/684229/36 "2014-03-21T18:39:05Z")
> [@Tom\_Tildrum](#): > > Legislators in several states have begun [considering](http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/executions-could-go-back-gas-chamber-electric-chair) a return to earlier methods. Guillotine, I say! In a public square! With a big drumroll! And crazy women in the front row knitting! ---
**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:** [March 21, 2014, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-there-be-a-shortage-of-execution-drugs/684229/37 "2014-03-21T18:59:44Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > I’m not sure what this has to do with the complaint about drug companies objecting to making lethal injections while they make treatments for some diseases and not others. That pharma will do what’s good for their stockholders over what’s good for their nominal patients, the latter including the overall population of their nation. Providing USP-grade thanatotics - more precisely, \*not \*failing to make those very few and exact formulations that have other uses but are the only legally-allowed execution compounds - should be seen as a grave and necessary purpose and part of their greater obligation to the socioeconomic system that supports them. None of the compounds are toxins with lethality as their only characteristic. But the makers can dodge an ethical bullet - and more importantly, a financial one - by making pharmacologically equivalent compounds that are not on the LI list and not making those that are. Pharma makes and promotes _directly to the consumer_ hundreds of drugs that have serious and even lethal side effects, drugs that kill many more people than are ever executed each year, all in the name of profit and stockholder content. If they can justify that ethically, they have no grounds for avoiding manufacture of drugs that might be used to deliberately kill someone just to slide through that razor-thin ethical gate. (ETA: Oh, and marketing/image/stock valuation gate as well.) I also maintain that if they are allowed to sell and strenuously promote basically feel-good drugs that kill some users, all in the name of profits, they have an ethical obligation to use some goodly portion of those profits on development of life-sustaining but unprofitable drugs. You can disagree and point to business factors if you like; I think companies in the business of human suffering need to meet a higher standard than, say, Apple or GM. Doing the unpleasant and unpopular part of their mandate is part of that. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2014, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-there-be-a-shortage-of-execution-drugs/684229/38 "2014-03-21T19:23:14Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > That pharma will do what’s good for their stockholders over what’s good for their nominal patients, the latter including the overall population of their nation. Some of these criticisms are accurate and some are a lot more nuanced than you are presenting - these companies spend money developing drugs for rarer diseases, but spending money doesn’t guarantee a successful outcome and they are allowed to make decisions about their spending priorities. There’s no reason they couldn’t put more of their own money into those conditions (when they do come up with treatments, they are often fabulously expensive) and they could be required to do so. But it doesn’t have much to do with the subject at hand. Making drugs for executions isn’t a public service, and it’s not incumbent on them to do it. Complaining that people or companies can’t make any moral stands unless they are stainless and perfect is simply unreasonable, so I don’t give much weight to that argument. They do some things wrong, and some of them feel this is the right thing to do. ---
**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:** [March 21, 2014, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-there-be-a-shortage-of-execution-drugs/684229/39 "2014-03-21T19:34:27Z")
Okay. But it’s a lot like Smith & Wesson refusing to make stainless-steel, ivory-handled 5-shot revolvers with a 6.25" barrel because that’s the only weapon legally allowed for _coups de grace_. And yes, I think making a compound that in part serves a public purpose, when such compounds may only be made by a very limited number of certified and approved makers, \*is \*an obligation. A company that takes, especially in this realm, needs to be a company that contributes. Maybe the companies could share the duty. Maybe they could even do it a variation of “firing squad” style; five of them provide the compound and one is randomly and anonymously selected. You can’t deny that they are being very, very selective in their interpretation of ethics, and that the interpretations invariably favor the highest possible profit scenario. If you believe that’s just how business is, fine. As I said, I hold businesses that hold human lives in their hands to a higher standard - and that includes fulfilling the limited capability of providing a legal substance for a legal use. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2014, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-there-be-a-shortage-of-execution-drugs/684229/40 "2014-03-21T19:44:35Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > And yes, I think making a compound that in part serves a public purpose, when such compounds may only be made by a very limited number of certified and approved makers, \*is \*an obligation. A company that takes, especially in this realm, needs to be a company that contributes. Maybe the companies could share the duty. Maybe they could even do it a variation of “firing squad” style; five of them provide the compound and one is randomly and anonymously selected. This is like saying that it is the responsibility of citizens to volunteer to participate in a firing squad regardless of their moral objections. Pharmaceutical companies have no moral, ethical, or legal obligation to provide a product specifically intended to perform an action of questionable ethical use, any more than they would be obligated to work on bioweapons programs. That “big pharma” engages in other ethically-suspect programs and that their objection is largely a public relations issue is irrelevant. The reality is that they are not obligated to do diddily-shit to support executions if their investors or board of directors have an objection, ethical, moral, or practical. Stranger [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-there-be-a-shortage-of-execution-drugs/684229.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-there-be-a-shortage-of-execution-drugs/684229.md?page=3)