British maker of death penalty drugs adds new restrictions for US buyers

Hikma Pharmaceuticals moves to avoid 'unintended purposes' for drugs amid growing European boycott on sale to the USA drug manufacturer based in Britain has vowed to add new restrictions to sales of its products in the US after it was revealed that it sold a batch of barbiturate to the Arkansas department of corrections, which intended to use it in executions.Hikma Pharmaceuticals has promised to put in place "concrete steps to restrict the supply of its products for unintended uses" following the disclosure by the legal action charity Reprieve that a wholly owned subsidiary in the US had sold injectable phenobarbital to the Arkansas prison service which was seeking to devise a new way of killing its death-row inmates."Hikma strongly objects to the use of any of its products in capital punishment," the company said in a statement.Hikma is the latest pharmaceutical company to be caught selling death penalty drugs to the US amid a growing boycott across Europe and around the world of lethal injection drug sales to capital punishment states. It follows a line of firms, including the Danish company Lundbeck and the US manufacturer Hospira, to place legal or production hurdles in the way of such sales.Ironically, Arkansas turned to the Hikma subsidiary, West-Ward Pharmaceuticals in Memphis, Tennessee, as a possible way of skirting the drug boycott. Since 2011 execution drugs have been in increasingly short supply after the European commission banned exports of listed chemicals to ...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: United States Capital punishment World news Pharmaceuticals industry guardian.co.uk Europe Drugs UK news Arkansas Source Type: news