Texas faces looming shortage of execution drug pentobarbital

Suppliers baulk at providing sedatives to the US state that executes more inmates than any otherTexas, the state with the highest execution rate in the US, is running out of a sedative used in its three-drug cocktail for lethal injections for the second time in 13 months, a state official said on Thursday.A spokesman for the Texas department of criminal justice, Jason Clark, confirmed that the state's supply of pentobarbital, which has been used in the execution of condemned killers in the state since July last year, will reach its expiry date in September.Texas switched to pentobarbital, a barbiturate that is the drug of choice for physician-assisted suicide in Europe, when supplies of sodium thiopental, previously used by the state in its three-drug execution mix, were cut off.The Illinois-based pharmaceutical company Hospira said in 2011 it would stop making thiopental after the government of Italy, where it planned to move production of the drug, raised objections, citing its use in executions.Richard Dieter, who heads the Death Penalty Information Center, said Texas and other states that were forced to switch from thiopental are now facing a problem with the availability of pentobarbital, which is often used to put down animals.Texas has executed 11 inmates so far in 2013 – including one on Wednesday night – while 10 executions have been carried out elsewhere in the US. Officials said there were five more Texas executions scheduled this year, with the next one set fo...
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