That's the title of a widely-distributed Associated Press report, via NPR.
The Food and Drug Administration helped Arizona and California obtain a quick overseas source of a hard-to-find execution drug even as the agency declared it would not regulate or block imports, records show.
The shortage of the drug, sodium thiopental, has disrupted executions around the country. Newly released documents show the FDA helped Arizona import a supply of the drug from an English company last fall as it prepared to execute a condemned killer.
California prison officials also say the agency last week released a batch of the drug the state bought, also from England. The FDA would not comment on its role in helping either state.
Three states — Alabama, Oklahoma and Texas — plan executions this week. Alabama and Texas use sodium thiopental, an anesthetic in short supply in the U.S. because of manufacturing issues, and have enough of the drug for now. Records obtained by The Associated Press show, though, that Texas may soon run out. Oklahoma uses a different drug.
Missouri and Texas have executions next month, as does Ohio, which has hinted it could be run short after Feb. 17. "Beyond that, we will not be commenting on our supply," said Ohio prisons spokeswoman JoEllen Smith. Missouri may also be running out.
In response to state queries, the FDA has announced it will not stop overseas shipments to the U.S. of the drug sodium thiopental, because the agency does not regulate products used in lethal injection. A pending federal lawsuit in Arizona challenges the use of overseas drugs, saying they may be substandard and could lead to botched executions if they don't render an inmate properly unconscious.
"Reviewing substances imported or used for the purpose of state-authorized lethal injection clearly falls outside of FDA's explicit public health role," said agency spokesman Christopher Kelly.
The FDA has long maintained that a 1985 U.S. Supreme Court ruling freed it from any authority to regulate drugs used in executions.
And:
After Arizona officials explained to the FDA the need to bring the drugs in quickly, the FDA official recommended "the shipment be processed expeditiously to us as it was for the purpose of executions and not for use by the general public." The information is contained in an e-mail from an Arizona prisons official to the California prisons agency obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union through a public records request and posted publicly.
The ACLU accused the FDA of trying to hold two contradictory positions at once.
"The FDA is actively assisting these states, but they're not enforcing the law, and they're not doing anything to determine that the drugs are what they're claimed to be and that they work properly," said Natasha Minkser, death penalty policy director for the ACLU's Northern California chapter.
Kelly, the FDA spokesman, declined to comment.
California Watch posts, "State can keep lethal drug supplier secret," by Ryan Gabrielson.
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation doesn’t have to release the names of its lethal injection drug suppliers, a state judge ruled on Monday.
But prison officials might have to produce their communications with former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and his aides about California’s international search for sodium thiopental.
That search ran from August to October – with calls to hospitals, other states and, at one point, someone in Pakistan – before the corrections department received 12 grams of the anesthetic from Arizona. The department later purchased another 521 grams from a British vendor that it refuses to identify.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California has sued the prison system, seeking the release of public records related to the acquisition of the lethal injection drug. The state has released more than 1,000 pages of internal communications. Officials have blacked out identifying information on many documents.
Superior Court Judge Charlotte Woolard, presiding over the lawsuit, agreed prison officials should not have to name names when it comes to drug companies and suppliers.
Doing so might endanger the companies that sold California its sodium thiopental and their employees’ safety, Woolard said. That concern outweighed public interest in disclosure.
“What we’re dealing with is a highly heated issue,” the judge said.
Earlier coverage begins with the post, "More on the California Drug Purchase."
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