Amid Opiod Crisis, Fentanyl So Good At Killing People That U.S. Weighed Using it for Executions

[Turd Fergusen]

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. Department of Justice examined using fentanyl in lethal injections as it prepared last year to resume executing condemned prisoners, a then untested use of the powerful, addictive opioid that has helped fuel a national crisis of overdose deaths.

The department revealed it had contemplated using the drug in a court filing last month, which has not been previously reported.

In the end, it decided against adopting the drug for executions. Attorney General William Barr announced in July his department instead would use pentobarbital, a barbiturate, when it resumes federal executions later this year, ending a de facto moratorium on the punishment put in place by the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama.

But the special consideration given to the possibilities of fentanyl, even as federal agents were focused on seizing illegal imports of the synthetic opioid, show how much has changed since the federal government last carried out an execution nearly 20 years ago.

Many pharmaceutical companies have since put tight controls on their distribution channels to stop their drugs being used in executions.

As old supply chains vanished, many states, and the federal government in turn, have been forced to tinker with their lethal recipes. They have experimented with different drugs, in some cases leading to grisly "botched" executions in which the condemned prisoners have visibly suffered prolonged, excruciating deaths, viewed by some as a breach of the constitutional ban on "cruel and unusual" punishments.

Full Story:

Netscape ISP Homepage

 

[Keepalowprofile]

I say we use what's available.
Heroin, fentanyl, toilet bowl cleaner.

Post automatically merged: Sep 13, 2019

Sorry buddy. We ran out of pentobarbital, fentanyl and heroin.
We have peroxide, rubbing alcohol and
Mr. Clean.
What'll ya have.

 

[Sue sue]

Go for it

 

[Satanica]

It's not like it would make a dent in the supply since we don't perform that many executions in this country, but I'm all for it. Seems to be that it would be a good solution and no one would be squawking about it being inhumane.

 

[Sejanus]

No trouble getting bullets.
Solution seems rather obvious.