Hospira is the only company within the world that manufactures Sodium thiopental. That is an anesthetic substance used in death penalty executions. Italy has denied the application Hospira submitted to manufacture the drug. Germany has also disallowed export of the drug. The United States has a scarcity of the substance due to this.

Hospira can’t seem to get a permit to produce from Germany or Italy

Hospira is the only manufacturer of sodium thiopental. A permit to produce in Italy was the company’s next move. The Italian government, however, said it would deny the license unless Hospira could assure the drug would never be used in lethal injection cocktails. At the very same time, the German Medical Association asked distributors to reject any U.S. requests for the narcotic. Since Hospira cannot get a license to produce the substance, the company could have to stop production entirely.

Death penalty drug scarcity

Now that Hospira has been denied a permit to manufacture sodium thiopental, there is a death penalty narcotic shortage. Many states no longer have enough sodium thiopental to execute all the individuals they have on death row. There is no legal way to get the narcotic either considering the British government banned exports of sodium thiopental. The shortage began to appear last year. A wholesaler in Britain sold it illegally to AZ and California. Any countries in the European Union aren’t allowed to use the death penalty. This has been the case since 2008.

A substitute substance

A sodium thiopental replacement drug is something most states are looking into with the death penalty drug scarcity. The barbiturate narcotic Pentobarbital is being looked at. It is manufactured within the United States and has the exact same effects. Ohio has already used the substitute narcotic in three executions. Doctor-assisted suicide is what pentobarbital is used for in OR. State supreme courts have judged it as “humane” already.

Citations

The Guardian

guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/23/lethal-injection-sodium-thiopental-hospira

MSNBC

msnbc.msn.com/id/41233372/ns/health-health_care/