Wednesday, December 21, 2011

EU Bans Export of Death Penalty Drugs

The European Commission has moved to limit the export of barbiturates to countries which, like the United States, use the drugs in lethal-injection death-penalty executions. Some individual countries and some pharmaceutical firms have already restricted export to death-penalty states, resulting in a serious shortage; this move by the EU will restrict supplies still further. Sadly, I imagine that resourceful death-penalty states will simply move to using other drugs; but perhaps the need to reconsider their methods of execution will lead some states to reconsider the death penalty entirely.

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