A Danish pharmaceutical company is changing its distribution system to stop one of its drugs from being used in U.S. executions, adding a significant obstacle for states that have scrambled recently to find a suitable lethal injection drug.
Lundbeck Inc. chief executive Ulf Wiinberg said Friday that his company will demand that U.S. distributors sign an agreement stating they will not make pentobarbital — a sedative with a number of uses — available for prisons using it for lethal injections. A growing number of death penalty states are using the sedative since the sole U.S. manufacturer of another key execution drug announced this year that it would not resume production of it.
Wiinberg said that his company would take action against any distributor who breaks the agreement.
"Lundbeck will have to approve each order and everyone buying the product must sign a paper stating they will not sell it on to prisons," Wiinberg said, saying that the move should bar U.S. prisons from buying the drug indirectly through other suppliers.
"We are confident that our new distribution program will play a substantial role in restricting prisons' access," he said.
Pentobarbital, which is produced in Lundbeck's plant in Kansas, is also used to treat seizures and destroy animals. But it has become a key element in U.S. executions as supplies dwindle of sodium thiopental, which most of the nation's 34 death penalty states once used as part of a three-drug combination.
Lundbeck began seeking a way to restrict prisons from using pentobarbital almost as soon as they began adopting it. At first, the company complained its product was being misused, and wrote in letters to prison authorities and politicians that using the drug to carry out the death penalty "falls outside its approved indications." But the letters and other efforts didn't have much effect.
Reprieve, the London-based human rights group that sought to ban the use of pentobarbital, celebrated Friday's announcement. Reprieve investigator Maya Foa said the move should effectively cut prisons off from buying more pentobarbital.
"There aren't legitimate channels for prisons to access the drugs," she said.
Still, the move won't immediately choke off the supply. Several death penalty states have already purchased stockpiles of pentobarbital, and it's unclear whether suppliers who already have the drug will be restricted from selling more of it. And vendors could still try to sell the chemical to prisons through backchannels, although Foa said they could then face legal action.
Dublin, Ohio-based Cardinal Health, one of the world's largest pharmaceutical distributors, is working with Lundbeck to help implement the new strategy, spokeswoman Tara Schumacher said Friday.
Cardinal Health has provided the drug to Georgia and Oregon's corrections departments.
Carol Wright, a veteran federal public defender in Columbus, Ohio, welcomed Lundbeck's announcement as especially important in Ohio, which uses a single dose of pentobarbital in executions.
"Lundbeck's bold and responsible move reflects a growing worldwide intolerance for executions by any means," Wright said.
Ohio prisons spokesman Carlo LoParo did not have an immediate comment Friday when told of Lundbeck's announcement. The state has enough of the drug for the next scheduled execution on July 19, he said.
Texas, with the country's busiest death chamber, has enough of the drug for the eight executions it has scheduled through September, said spokesman Jason Clark.
Oklahoma, the first state to switch to pentobarbital, has no executions scheduled and no supply of the drug, said prisons spokesman Jerry Massie.
"It's too early for us to make any assessment of what kind of issues this is going to create," he said.
Pentobarbital has been used in 15 executions in the U.S., including two in which observers noted unusual movements.
Eddie Duval Powell raised his head with a confused look on his faced and glanced around Alabama's death chamber after he was injected with the drug on June 16. And Roy Willard Blankenship jerked his head several times and appeared to gasp for air after Georgia officials used the drug to execute him.
Brian Kammer, Blankenship's defense attorney, unsuccessfully urged state and federal courts to halt the execution on grounds that pentobarbital is an unreliable drug for executions, and that it would cause his client to needlessly suffer. He said Friday that the move should make it "close to impossible" for prisons to get the drug, but said he expected corrections departments to seek out alternative supplies.
"For now, I think this means that once corrections agencies run out of their current supplies of pentobarbital, there will be a drug supply crisis in terms of implementing capital punishment," he said.
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Associated Press writer Andrew Welsh-Huggins in Columbus, Ohio, contributed to this report.