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.