Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer announced Friday that it has imposed controls on the distribution of its products to ensure that none are used in lethal injections, a step that closes off the last remaining open-market source of drugs used in executions.
Pfizer said it would restrict sales to selected wholesalers of seven products that could be used in executions. The distributors must certify that they will not resell the drugs to corrections departments and will be closely monitored.
More than 20 U.S. and European drug companies have already adopted such restrictions, citing either moral or business reasons.
The obstacles to lethal injection have grown in the last five years as manufacturers, seeking to avoid association with executions, have barred the sale of their products to corrections agencies. Experiments with new drugs, a series of botched executions and covert efforts to obtain lethal chemicals have mired many states in court challenges.
The mounting difficulty in obtaining lethal drugs has already caused states to furtively scramble for supplies.
Some states have used straw buyers or tried to import drugs from abroad that are not approved by the Food and Drug Administration, only for them to be seized by federal agents. Some have covertly bought supplies from compounding pharmacies while others, including Arizona, Oklahoma and Ohio, have delayed executions for months or longer because of drug shortages or legal issues tied to injection procedures.
A few states have adopted the electric chair, the firing squad or the gas chamber as alternatives if lethal drugs are not available.
Lawyers for death-row inmates have challenged the efforts of corrections officials to conceal how the drugs are obtained, saying this makes it impossible to know if they meet quality standards or might cause undue suffering.
Before Missouri carried out an execution on Wednesday, for example, it refused to say in court whether the lethal barbiturate it used, pentobarbital, was produced by a compounding pharmacy or a licensed manufacturer. Akorn, the only approved company making that drug, has tried to prevent its use in executions.
Pfizer's decision follows its acquisition last year of Hospira, a company that has made seven drugs used in executions, including barbiturates, sedatives and agents that cause paralysis or heart failure.
Hospira had long tried to prevent diversion of its products to state prisons but had not succeeded; its products were used in a prolonged execution in Ohio in 2014, and are stockpiled by Arkansas, according to documents obtained by reporters.
Because these drugs are also distributed for normal medical use, there is no way to determine what share of the agents used in recent executions were produced by Hospira or, more recently, Pfizer.
Campaigns against the death penalty, and Europe's strong prohibitions on the export of execution drugs, have raised the stakes for pharmaceutical companies. But many, including Pfizer, say medical principles and business concerns have guided their policies.
"Pfizer makes its products to enhance and save the lives of the patients we serve," the company said in Friday's statement, and "strongly objects to the use of its products as lethal injections for capital punishment."
Of the 32 states with the death penalty, a majority -- Arkansas among them -- have imposed secrecy around their drug sources, saying that suppliers would face severe reprisals or even violence from death-penalty opponents.
In a court hearing this week, a Texas official argued that disclosing the identity of its pentobarbital source "creates a substantial threat of physical harm."
Last year, Arkansas lawmakers passed Act 1096, which revised the state's execution protocols and also prohibited public disclosure of the source of the state's execution drugs.
Lawmakers hoped that, by providing drug vendors anonymity so they would not be harassed by death-penalty opponents, the state would develop a stable source of execution drugs.
Arkansas hasn't executed anyone since 2005, as executions have been delayed by lawsuits and shortages of lethal injection drugs.
The 2015 Arkansas law was partially struck down as unconstitutional by a Pulaski County circuit judge in a lawsuit filed by death-row inmates. That ruling is under appeal to the Arkansas Supreme Court. One of the three drugs in the state's inventory has a June expiration date.
Prison officials have said the provider of the drugs refused to sell more to the state and that they have not been able to line up another vendor.
Georgia, Missouri and Texas have obtained pentobarbital from compounding pharmacies, which operate without normal FDA oversight and are intended to help patients meet needs for otherwise unavailable medications.
Other states say they have been unable to find such suppliers.
Last fall, shipments of sodium thiopental, ordered by Texas and Arizona from an unapproved source in India, were seized in airports by federal officials.
The number of executions has declined to just 28 in 2015, compared with a recent peak of 98 in 1999, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Information for this article was contributed by Erik Eckholm of The New York Times and by Spencer Willems of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
A Section on 05/14/2016