TEXAS PRODUCING ITS OWN EXECUTION DRUG

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice is compounding its own pentobarbital and reportedly making it available to other death penalty states

A court filing in the U.S. District Court, Western District of Oklahoma reveals Texas is compounding its own pentobarbital and has sold three vials of the lethal injection drug to at least one other death penalty state, Virginia.

According to the Houston Press:

“The matter came up in a Thursday court filing by attorneys for Richard Fairchild, an Oklahoma man scheduled to be executed for murdering his girlfriend's 3-year-old child in 1993. In the filing, Fairchild's attorneys argue that Oklahoma prison officials should consider other lethal injection options besides midazolam, the drug used in the state's botched execution of Clayton Lockett last year.

As part of the filing, Fairchild's attorneys attached a purchase order from the Virginia Department of Corrections dated August 26, 2015. On the order, the supplier of three 50-milliliter packages of pentobarbital is listed as “TX Dept of Criminal Justice.”

What a brilliant move on the part of Texas. Several years ago, because of pressure from death penalty opponents, pharmaceutical manufacturers stopped selling drugs used in executions to prison systems. That forced states to turn to compounding pharmacies for their execution drugs. But when their identities were publicly revealed, the compounding pharmacies were condemned, harassed and even threatened with harm by a shitload of anti-death penalty zealots. Thus most compounding pharmacies are now refusing to make execution drugs for the states.

Problem solved! There is no reason why Texas and other states cannot hire licensed pharmacists to compound pentobarbital. There is no reason why Oklahoma could not hire its own licensed pharmacists to compound midazolam.

Last March, the American Pharmacists Association adopted a policy that discourages its members from providing death-penalty drugs:

The American Pharmacists Association discourages pharmacist participation in executions on the basis that such activities are fundamentally contrary to the role of pharmacists as providers of health care.

That was followed up with a similar resolution by the International Academy of Compounding Pharmacists:

While the pharmacy profession recognizes an individual practitioner’s right to determine whether to dispense a medication based upon his or her personal, ethical and religious beliefs, IACP discourages its members from participating in the preparation, dispensing, or distribution of compounded medications for use in legally authorized executions.

Those resolutions will make it even more difficult for states to find compounding pharmacies willing to supply then with lethal drugs, even in secret. But I am sure the states can find and hire licensed pharmacists willing to compound execution drugs if they are paid well.

For once Texas, not California, is a trend setter. Congratulations Texas and may the executions go on!