OK, let’s start off with the news that brought this to my awareness (this, plus a coincidental conversation last weekend- where, might I add, I was glad I had decided to keep this blog/actually had successful interactions with fellow human beings where I had interesting things to say, so we can totally score one for the silly blog concept):
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/09/25/226112703/ohio-other-states-running-out-of-lethal-injection-drug
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/26/ohio-execution-drug-pentobarbital-eu-boycott
If this issue is interesting enough to you, you can certainly click around from the two articles and find other things, and/or Google (or DuckDuckGo, if you want more privacy) some of the stuff that comes up.
Discussion about the death penalty (and broad discussion about how effed the criminal justice system is) aside, can I just say. For one second. Srsly…
Big pharma decided to have morals? Like, for realsies??? Since when? Is this a Europe thing, or is it just that it stopped being profitable to the companies, or what?
OK, anyway, assume the above paragraph went on for several more pages of me wanting to believe that there can be good in this world at levels it seems unlikely to continue to exist at, and let’s move on. Because there’s another layer, one step back.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/jul/01/pentobarbital-lundbeck-execution-drug
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jan/23/lethal-injection-sodium-thiopental-hospira
http://www.npr.org/2013/07/30/207026540/where-do-drugs-for-lethal-injections-come-from-nobody-knows
Apparently the people-killing drug we’re running out of *now* is actually the drug we *started* using when we ran out of the *original* drug that we liked to use to kill people.
So here’s the kind of amazing part. We’ve been getting our lethal injection drugs from a very limited number of suppliers. Guess I never thought about it, but it strikes me as truly amazing that one company can have a monopoly on… well, death. Or, state-ordered death, anyway. Perhaps that’s partly because my job, in particular, serves to remind me on a more-frequently-than-I’d-like basis that it’s not exactly difficult to come up with lethal drugs.
We’ve got drugs that we can use in assisted suicides (and legislation for allowing that is becoming increasingly popular). We sure as heck have drugs we can kill ourselves with *accidentally,* and we can go (start to finish) to fascinating underground lengths to get ahold of the illicit ones. The country regulates the heck out of “illegal” drugs and encourages and in some cases outright enforces the use of ‘”legal” drugs in ways that often only make sense when you assume someone somewhere is getting bribed. We’ve got, in short, all kinds of issues with drugs in this country, and all kinds of drugs, and lots of the drugs we have do, in fact, end up killing people.
And yet, somehow, with all that, we can actually *run out* of That One Drug We Like To Use When We Kill People On Purpose.
Because… why? The American criminal justice system is concerned with minimizing suffering and being humane? *That’s* the justification we’re using? because, seriously. Just sit and think about that one for a second. Ponder it. *Digest* it. Well, maybe take some Pepto Bismol preemptively first.
I guess it’s just one more “what the $*&%?” to add to the long list of issues and rants about, well, a whole bunch of topics at once, really.
tolerablesmalltalk 