The British man­u­fac­tur­er Hikma Pharmaceuticals recent­ly announced new rules to restrict the sup­ply of its prod­ucts for unin­tend­ed uses, such as car­ry­ing out exe­cu­tions in the United States. Earlier this year, Reprieve, a legal advo­ca­cy orga­ni­za­tion based in London, found that a U.S. sub­sidiary of Hikma sold 100 grams of phe­no­bar­bi­tal to the Arkansas Department of Corrections. Arkansas decid­ed to use the new, untest­ed drug in their lethal injec­tion process when they were unable to secure sup­plies of the drugs they nor­mal­ly use. A spokesman for Hikma Pharmaceuticals said the order had been made as part of the reg­u­lar request for drugs for prison hos­pi­tal ser­vices and did not raise any red flags because the drug had nev­er been used in exe­cu­tions before. Arkansas has been con­tact­ed by the drug com­pa­ny and told that the sub­sidiary was clos­ing the account. The state’s cur­rent sup­ply of phe­no­bar­bi­tal is suf­fi­cient to car­ry out eight exe­cu­tions and will expire in October 2015. The state will need to seek alter­na­tive sources or dif­fer­ent drugs when their cur­rent sup­ply becomes unavail­able. Other drug com­pa­nies have put sim­i­lar restric­tions on the use of their drugs in executions.

There are no exe­cu­tion dates set in Arkansas, and legal chal­lenges to the exe­cu­tion protocol continue.

(E. Pilkington, ​“British mak­er of death penal­ty drugs adds new restric­tions for US buy­ers,” The Guardian, May 15, 2013). See Executions and Lethal Injection.

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