THE BRITISH government is pressing the European Union to impose an export ban on drugs that can be used in lethal injection executions in the United States, following a ban on the sale of three British-made drugs.
Last year, the UK banned the sale to the US of sodium thiopental.
Business secretary Vince Cable yesterday extended the restriction to cover three other products used by US state authorities – pancuronium bromide, potassium chloride and sodium pentobarbital.
“We oppose the death penalty in all circumstances and are clear that British drugs should not be used to carry out lethal injections,” said the Liberal Democrat.
“But we are also urging our European partners to follow suit so that this control can work effectively across Europe. We have therefore written to the EU Commission calling on them to apply this control on an EU-wide basis,” he said.
The restriction on sodium thiopental exports led to a drop in the number of executions in the US last year, the Washington-based Death Penalty Information Centre has said, because the muscle relaxant is legally required to be used.
Welcoming yesterday’s move, Clive Stafford-Smith of human rights body Reprieve, who took legal action last year to force the original ban on sodium thiopental, said he hoped the UK could “persuade our EU partners to take a similar line”.
Pancuronium bromide, a powerful muscle relaxant used to induce sleep before actual execution, is the second of a three-drug mixture given in most US executions, while potassium chloride, given last, stops the heart.
The third drug restricted yesterday, sodium pentobarbital, is a barbiturate more commonly used to put down animals, but its use has increased sharply as US states sought to get around the shortage of sodium thiopental.
Some of the sodium pentobarbital supplies have been sourced from a US-based subsidiary of a Danish pharmaceutical company, Lundbeck, which opposes its use in executions but says it cannot stop it getting in the hands of US states that carry out executions.
Terming the use of Lundbeck drugs “deeply regrettable”, Danish foreign minister Lene Espersen this week urged all US states to stop using them immediately.
In February, Swiss-based drug firm Novartis imposed a ban on sales of sodium pentobarbital to distributors or third parties if they had suspicions these parties would sell it on in the United States.
US drug firm Hospira said it was halting US production of the drug and would move manufacture to Italy because of its opposition to executions. The shortage in the US of sodium thiopental – no longer used as an anaesthetic in US hospitals – began last year after Hospira said it could not get stocks of a vital ingredient.
