FDA Halts Executions. The FDA?

Pictured is the California gas chamber, which hasn't been used since a federal judge called executions off in 2006. They don't use the lethal gas anymore, but what the heck, the chamber and viewing area already existed, so why not use it? Imagine that--California missing an opportunity to spend more of the taxpayers' money on deluxe accommodations for death penalty recipients.

Lethal injection became the fad method of execution so that mad dogs could be put down more humanely. As Sam Waterston said in defense of his prosecution of a death penalty case on Law and Order, "one can believe in the death penalty without being sanguine about it." But where there's a death penalty, there are do-gooders who won't countenance the ultimate punishment under any circumstances. The United States Supreme Court has firmly upheld the death penalty as constitutional, so the bleeding-hearts had to find another way around the problem.

Enter the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and the omnipresent Holder Justice Department (DOJ). If you can't stop executions per se, challenge the method. And challenge they have. Georgia was the first state to receive a knock on its door requiring that the state turn over its supply of sodium thiopental to the DEA. The drug is the first of three drugs administered to produce the final lethal result. This cocktail is the preferred method of execution in 34 states. Kentucky and Tennessee have also received a request from the DEA, but have not yet had their supply confiscated.

The FDA had made an independent decision some time back that the sodium thiopental being used in Georgia (among others) was not pure enough. It hounded the state and the manufacturers until the major supplier, Hospira, simply stopped making the drug. The drug is still available in large quantities from British manufacturers who are not hampered by ACLU science and FDA purity. So the domestic supply ran out, and death penalty opponents pushed the FDA into refusing to approve the British drug.

That got us to the next alphabet agency--the DEA. Having disapproved the British supply, the FDA handed-off to the DEA. The DEA began investigations which turned up the likelihood that several states appeared to be using the British supply which was "mis-branded" as something other than the first-step drug for lethal injections. But it was still sodium thiopental, and that's how it was labeled. Go figure.

A lawsuit was filed in the D.C. federal district court charging that Georgia, California, Tennessee and Kentucky have received shipments of the British drug in defiance of the FDA's disapproval. Suddenly the liberals have gone all chauvinistic about "foreign" drugs (although they don't seem to care much about the drugs coming across our southern border). Oddly, the defendant in the suit is the FDA itself, which doesn't seem to be putting up much of a defense. The logic is that the FDA should have to abide by the law and not allow the importation of unapproved foreign drugs.

Not satisfied with attacking our "trading partners'" ability to make good drugs, the lawsuit also tosses in the additional horror story of how even pure sodim thiopental, if not administered properly, can cause excruciating pain when the next two drugs are added to the lethal mix. So even if the British drug is as good as any American domestic sodium thiopental, its use must still be stopped until that additional "problem" is "solved."

And it just keeps getting better. In California, among others, the lethal injection procedure is performed by state corrections personnel. Few are doctors. Other lawsuits have been filed saying that the procedure is a medical procedure which should only be exercised by licensed doctors. That made the job easier for the death penalty opponents, since California had already gotten its sodium thiopental approved by a federal panel after lab certification of purity. But there's still that pesky problem of finding doctors who will carry out a death sentence (suddenly, they've discovered the Hippocratic Oath that they routinely ignore while performing abortions).

Texas solved its sodium thiopental problem by replacing it with domestically-produced pentobarbital. That was an FDA-approved alternative drug. But the ACLU pulled the "medical procedure" ploy, and the Texas Medical Association forbids its doctors from participating in executions. Texans have great deal more common sense than Californians, so at present at least, the ploy hasn't worked.

To sum up, a method of execution approved by the United States Supreme Court in a 7 to 2 decision in 2008 has been halted in its tracks in nearly half the states which have the death penalty by the FDA, DEA and ACLU. Not to be outdone, the DOJ has entered the arena, ordering the DEA to investigate state corrections officials for possessing drugs approved by the Supreme Court but not allowed by the FDA. Are you beginning to get irritated? I know I am. Barack Obama wants more agencies and fewer Senatorial confirmations for heads of those agencies. He's not satisfied with end-runs around Congress, he needs to end-around the Supreme Court as well.

I would like to add that the whole "humane execution" concept is a Progressive scam. Simply put, the most efficient, humane and quick method of execution is hanging. The worst horror stories about modern methods of hanging can't rival those of the electric chair and the gas chamber. But hanging isn't pretty enough for the "reformers." Still, the whole argument comes down to believing in the death penalty or not believing in it, and it's a fair debate. "Humane treatment" merely muddies the waters.

Sociologists and do-gooders have long substituted rehabilitation for punishment, even though they are supposed to be two intertwined concepts within the criminal justice system. Once the Supreme Court declared both the death penalty and the lethal injection process constitutional, the bleeding-hearts had to find a new way to attack. There is no issue of rehabilitation in the ultimate penalty, and the Supreme Court has determined its validity. Since the method has been upheld, that leaves only actual administration of the final punishment and/or the drugs themselves to be argued.

You don't need a doctor to carry out a hanging, and you don't need a pharmaceutical company to produce a rope. This concept of gently putting the murderer to sleep is all well and good, but I find it far too clinical and far too inhuman. We put beloved pets to sleep. We execute murderers. Perhaps we could improve our trade relations with France by buying their unused guillotines, the other quick and painless form of execution. But either way, the current debate is a smokescreen to cover up the agenda of those who oppose the death penalty, and to hell with the people of the individual states and the Supreme Court.

I have no quarrel with those who honestly oppose the death penalty. I've gone back and forth on the issue myself several times in my lifetime. I do have a quarrel with the dishonest misuse of the law, the courts and alphabet agencies to thwart the Constitution and the will of the people.