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Thread: Anesthesia Shortage

  1. #291
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    What do you think is going to happen now that virtually every death-penalty state has been having lethal-injection problems? Will they eventually go to nitrogen and/or the firing squad?

  2. #292
    Senior Member CnCP Legend FFM's Avatar
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    There are 27 million people in our state. I'm pretty sure there is someone around that has the guts and will sell the execution drug - at the right price. If compounders up the price with the increased risk from the attacking/harassing libtard animals out there, then it's more likely the compounders will sell it. Either that, or the 84th legislature can pass a law that demands that the DOC somehow produce the drug at the prison, or somewhere nearby. However, it hasn't been brought up for argument, so it doesn't look like the latter may happen at all. Personally, the 'auction' idea sounds better to me. If the state increases the bid for lethal injection drugs, then the more likely somebody is to be subdued by the money the state offers. I would certainly do it, if I had the skill set to create pentobarbital, or the money to offer to these compounders, especially for serving justice where it's needed. Or perhaps better yet, we can offer a major business incentive by inviting compounders a tax break for the risks they take by selling to the DOC. We are after all, a 'tax-friendly' state.
    Last edited by FFM; 03-09-2015 at 04:05 PM.

  3. #293
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    I agree FFM. The states that regularly execute inmates will not have a problem procuring the drugs.
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

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  4. #294
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    A look at how some states handle execution drug shortage

    OKLAHOMA

    The U.S. Supreme Court is poised to review Oklahoma’s use of the sedative midazolam in executions, and state legislators are considering the use of nitrogen gas to kill death-row prisoners. The sponsor of the nitrogen bill says the gas would gradually deprive inmates of oxygen, resulting in a painless death.

    The method has never been used in an execution in the United States. If the effort passes, nitrogen would be the state’s first alternative to lethal injection. Electrocution would move to third and firing squads to fourth. The bill was prompted by the botched execution of an inmate last April. Clayton Lockett struggled against his restraints after attendants administered lethal drugs through a poorly placed intravenous line.



    ARKANSAS

    Since the state’s last execution in 2005, inmates successfully argued in court that legislators ceded too much power over death row protocols to Arkansas’ Correction Department. A subsequent lawsuit claims new protocols put inmates at risk of an agonizing death. In this year’s legislative session, one lawmaker suggested abolishing the death penalty, but another lawmaker whose daughter was murdered in 1999 wants firing squads as another option for executioners.



    IDAHO

    Idaho allows prison officials to choose one of four options for lethal injection executions, depending on which chemicals are available. However, the state execution policy also gives both the Idaho Department of Correction director and the chief of prisons operations the power to change the execution procedure at any time, based on their own discretion.

    Idaho law once allowed execution by firing squad, though the option was never used. It was removed from the books in 2009. Last year, Idaho prison officials considered asking lawmakers to bring back the state’s firing squad, but axed the plan after determining it would cost at least $300,000 to set up the squad.



    WYOMING

    The Wyoming Legislature has considered the use of firing squads in the past two legislative sessions. Republican state Sen. Bruce Burns, who introduced the bills, said he considers the gas chamber to violate the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment and would opt for using the firing squad because it would be the cheapest option.

    In the legislative session that wrapped up this month, the Wyoming House and Senate deadlocked over whether the state should offer to sedate inmates before shooting them. A majority of senators supported offering sedation while the House rejected the idea. The session ended before they could reach agreement. Officials with the state corrections department say they don’t have drugs on hand that would allow them to carry out an execution if they needed to, although no one is on death row in the state.



    TENNESSEE


    In Tennessee, legal challenges to lethal injection and difficulty obtaining drugs have stalled planned executions for more than five years. Several death-row inmates have died in prison while awaiting execution.

    Last year, the Tennessee Legislature attempted to jump-start the process by reinstating use of the electric chair. A new law allows inmates to be put to death by electrocution if the state is not able to obtain lethal injection drugs or if lethal injection is ruled to be unconstitutional.

    But the law only brought a new legal challenge. Thirty-three death row inmates sued Tennessee over the constitutionality of both lethal injection and the electric chair. Several scheduled executions have been postponed in recent months to allow those challenges to be heard. At a December hearing on one aspect of the lawsuit before the Tennessee Supreme Court, justices asked the inmates’ attorney to name a method of execution that he did consider constitutional. The attorney, Steve Kissinger, at first tried to avoid the question. When pressed, he mentioned the firing squad and hanging.



    TEXAS


    Texas is almost out of the drug it uses to execute inmates. The state executed a Mexican mafia hit man Wednesday using its second-to-last dose of pentobarbital, leaving authorities with enough of the powerful sedative to carry out just one more execution. By far the nation’s most active death penalty state, Texas has executed 522 inmates since 1982, when it became the first state to use lethal injection. The state is searching to replenish its pentobarbital supply.



    OHIO


    Ohio executions are on hold as the state struggles to find supplies of lethal-injection drugs. After running out of its two previous drugs, the state switched to a never-tried two-drug combination of midazolam, a sedative, and hydromorphone, a painkiller.

    In that method’s only use, in January 2014, inmate Dennis McGuire repeatedly snorted and gasped during his 26-minute execution, the state’s longest. Ohio postponed executions as lawsuits were filed over McGuire’s death, and eventually the state dumped the two-drug combo last year.

    Instead, the prisons department said it will use one of two drugs in future executions: pentobarbital or sodium thiopental. The catch is Ohio doesn’t have either drug and both are virtually impossible to obtain except in specialty batches known as compounded drugs. The state has delayed all executions until 2016 and beyond.

    http://www.trivalleycentral.com/casa...35e0bf6f1.html
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

  5. #295
    Moderator mostlyclassics's Avatar
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    Last year, Idaho prison officials considered asking lawmakers to bring back the state’s firing squad, but axed the plan after determining it would cost at least $300,000 to set up the squad.
    I find the $300,000 cost hard to believe.

  6. #296
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Execution drug supply is running low, and states are looking for lethal backup plans

    Nitrogen chamber? Firing squad? Electric chair?

    WASHINGTON, D.C. - A bulky wooden chair outfitted with leather straps sits in Huntsville’s Texas Prison Museum, still fully functional, but unused in its faux death chamber. But before its retirement in 1964 this electric chair, dubbed Old Sparky, carried out 361 executions. For visitors, the chair stands as an illustration of how far Texas has advanced in capital punishment – a relic of what some consider past barbarism. But with a dwindling supply of lethal injection drugs in the U.S., states have started looking to bygone execution methods – not unlike Old Sparky – as a backup plan.

    If Texas goes through with Kent Sprouse’s execution April 9, it will have exhausted its last dose of pentobarbital, the lethal injection drug it has used since 2012. That leaves the state, which has the macabre distinction of being the nation’s leading executioner, with three more April executions and no plan as to how to carry them out. Jason Clark, a spokesperson with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, said the department is “exploring all options, including the continued use of the pentobarbital or alternate drugs.”

    But could “all options” also include plugging Old Sparky back in?

    That’s what officials in other states are considering. This month, Alabama's House of Representatives voted on a bill that, in case of a continued drug shortage, would bring back the electric chair. And in May, the Tennessee Supreme Court will hear a challenge to the state’s attempt to bring back the electric chair.

    And if the electric chair sounds antiquated in this age of lethal injection, just consider the firing squad.

    The Utah state legislature passed a bill this month that would reauthorize death by a firing squad if lethal injection drugs cannot be secured 30 days before an inmates’ scheduled execution. Rep. Paul Ray, the bill’s sponsor, decided to draft it after he learned last year that Utah had no execution drugs.

    “It became apparent at that time that we needed a plan B just in case,” Ray said. “We’re still two or three years out on our next execution, but my thought was, ‘Well, let’s get something in place now. Just in case we need it, it’ll be there.’”

    Legislation to allow firing squads in Arkansas also was introduced this year, along with a failed attempt in Wyoming. Oklahoma, meanwhile, is toying with a new take on the gas chamber. The Oklahoma House passed a bill earlier in March that would allow nitrogen chamber executions. Like its predecessor, nitrogen chambers would involve an airtight chamber, but instead of filling it with poison gas, the nitrogen would cause death by asphyxiation.

    But it isn’t some nostalgia for brutality fueling this wave of states seemingly backpedaling on progress. It’s increasingly becoming a necessity. A recent GAO report shows that the U.S. faces a widespread drug shortage that started in 2007.

    As the stock of drugs began to dwindle, few domestic suppliers were able to to keep up with the deadly demand. So states turned to European pharmacies. It turned out to be a temporary fix, as one by one Italian, German and Dutch suppliers cut off drugs supplies when they discovered they were being used to kill. The companies’ bans reflect a larger cultural difference – the U.S. is the only Western country that still carries out executions.

    Keeping dates with death

    But if the aim was to stymie executions, the plan looks like it backfired.

    “Our hand has kind of been forced without the availability of drugs,” Ray said. “There’s still support for the death penalty, so you have to have a way to do that.”

    He continued, “The interesting thing is that these companies in Europe are opposed to the death penalty so they withhold these drugs. They seem to be opposed to the firing squad over there. But they’re the reason we’re using the firing squad. They need to understand that they might not like what we’re doing, but they’re the reason we’re doing it.”

    Most of the state legislation, however, is nothing but the sketching of a backup plan. Still, with the clock ticking for 2015’s roster of death row inmates, 10 across the country and six in the state, Texas needs a solution – fast. Even for trigger-happy Texas, it’s unlikely that there will be a sudden shift to another form of execution – or at least not in the next month. Meghan Ryan, a law professor at Southern Methodist University, pointed out that even if states dodge the problems that lethal injections pose, new methods would be open to judicial scrutiny.

    “The problem with going to other methods of execution is that there are potentially constitutional concerns about that, just like there are constitutional concerns about what states are doing now in experimenting with different lethal injection cocktails,” Ryan said. “We’re sort of in a state of uncertainty regarding executions in general.”

    Ryan said that the state push for lethal injection alternatives could hit a snag under the Eighth Amendment’s bar on cruel and unusual punishment. It is unclear if bringing old techniques out of retirement when lethal injections exist would hold up in court.

    “The idea that punishments ought to be evolving toward more humane methods of execution suggests that moving backward, such as toward the electric chair or firing squad, might be questionable or possibly unconstitutional,” Ryan said.

    Texas does have a stockpile of the sedative midazolam that it could adopt into its protocol with the stroke of a pen. But the controversial drug, which replaced the depleted sodium thiopental in some states’ drug cocktails, has been used in three botched executions. Most notably, it was part of the horrific death of Oklahoma inmate Clayton Lockett last April, which drew worldwide attention to lethal injection practices.

    “Every Department of Corrections in the country is looking at all of this,” said Deborah Denno, a law professor at Fordham University and expert on lethal injections. “They’re very aware that if they do anything wrong, and they’re so capable of it, that this is going to set into motion a series of questions about this entire process.”

    And if midazolam’s link to botched executions wasn’t enough, there’s the upcoming Supreme Court case brought by three Oklahoma death row inmates that centers on the drug. The case, which is set to be argued April 29, has already led judges in Florida and Oklahoma to halt executions until the court reaches a decision. So for now, it seems that midazolam’s reputation will keep Texas – or any other state – from touching its stash.

    “My sense is that they’re probably scrambling to find a compounding pharmacy in this country that would make more pentobarbital for them. That would be my first guess,” Denno said.

    The long-term solution to lethal injection drug shortages will take time and likely many court battles to sort out. But it’s time that Texas, at least, doesn’t have – unless it wants to do what Ohio did when it halted executions indefinitely after one was botched in 2014. The chances of that in the Lone Star state? Slim, especially since there have been no efforts for the state to take a break from its busy schedule.

    “Knowing the history of Texas and other states that are advocates of capital punishment, I think they will do what they can to try to keep executions in line and on schedule,” Ryan said.

    Much like the rest of the country, the next steps for Texas are unclear. The Supreme Court’s guidance on midazolam usage could clear pathways for states to use the drug. On the flip side, it could completely bar it, sending the U.S. on another pharmaceutical scramble. Or perhaps the frustration of switching from one drug to another, each step taken with unsure footing, will lead states to alternatives like in Utah.

    Meanwhile, Old Sparky is still on display.

    http://www.wcpo.com/decodedc/executi...l-backup-plans
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  7. #297
    Senior Member Member George's Avatar
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    Pharmacist group says members shouldn't aid in executions

    In a move that could heighten hurdles faced by states attempting to execute prisoners, a leading association for U.S. pharmacists has officially discouraged its members from providing drugs for use in lethal injections.

    The policy adopted by American Pharmacists Association delegates at their annual meeting Monday makes an ethical stand against providing such drugs, saying they run contrary to the role of pharmacists as health care providers.

    The association lacks legal authority to bar its more than 62,000 members from selling execution drugs, but its policies set pharmacists' ethical standards.

    Pharmacists now join doctors in having national associations with ethics codes that restrict credentialed members from participating in executions.

    "Now there is unanimity among all health professions in the United States who represent anybody who might be asked to be involved in this process," said association member Bill Fassett, who voted in favor of the policy.

    Compounding pharmacies, which make drugs specifically for individual clients, only recently became involved in the execution-drug business.

    Prison departments turned to made-to-order execution drugs from compounding pharmacies because pharmaceutical manufacturers refused to sell the drugs used for decades in lethal injections after coming under pressure from death penalty opponents.

    But now the compounded version is also becoming difficult to come by, with most pharmacists reluctant to expose themselves to possible harassment.

    Texas' prison agency scrambled this month to find a supplier to replenish its inventory before getting drugs from a compounding pharmacy it won't identify.

    Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman Jason Clark said Monday that he had no comment when told about the ruling.

    After a troubling use of a two-drug method last year, Ohio said it will use compounded versions of either pentobarbital or sodium thiopental in the future, though it doesn't have supplies of either and hasn't said how it will obtain them. All executions scheduled this year were pushed to 2016 to give the state more time to find the drugs.

    Other states are turning to alternative methods.

    Tennessee has approved the use of the electric chair if lethal-injection drugs aren't available, while Utah has reinstated the firing squad as a backup method if it can't obtain the drugs. Oklahoma is considering legislation that would make it the first state to allow the use of nitrogen gas as a potential execution method.

    Fassett, a professor emeritus of pharmacy law and ethics at Washington State University, said the united front by health professionals might force people to finally face the death penalty's harsh realities.

    Lethal injections have created a sterile setting for executions, he said.

    "It's like we're not really executing. We're sort of like taking Spot to the vet. We're just putting him to sleep, and that's not true," he said.

    http://www.enidnews.com/news/pharmac...82d92f737.html

  8. #298
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    I don't understand. The EU refuses to sell execution drugs to us. But is willing to sell millions of dollars worth of bombs, guns, tanks and planes to unstable countries that are in the midst of a military regime or on the verge of conflicts?

    Example
    In 2007, Spain licensed the sale of roughly $5.45 million of arms to Libya under the UN Comtrade category that covered bombs, rockets and missiles. The records indicate that this order was likely exported the following year. Amnesty believes that the commercial sale included MAT-120 cluster bombs, a 120mm mortar-fired munition that became infamous after reporters and human rights researchers discovered it had been used on civilian areas during the siege of Misurata (1500 Dead) (700 Dead Civilians).

    The EU is willing to sell weapons to countries that sponsor terrorism against the west and are under military regimes. They are not willing to sell drugs that kill murderers, but are willing to arm countries that will kill thousands of innocent people in proxy conflicts.

    Here is a link to anyone whom wants to see what I'm talking about.

    http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/fea...444131301.html
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

  9. #299
    Senior Member Member George's Avatar
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    Last edited by George; 05-11-2016 at 04:34 AM.

  10. #300
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    Well, that's politics.
    Many people in Europe and especially in Germany are also against the weapon exports. Selling execution drugs is not very profitable and we have a law that compels our government to fight against executions worldwide. That makes its easy to stop selling the drugs and to respect the people's choice. Unfortunalty the exports of weapons are very very profitable for the state and the big companies so the government doesn't care at all what the people think about those exports.

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