Another excellent report from Claudia Lauer at the AP (who has done incredible investigative work on this story since last fall) on Pfizer’s likely involvement in manufacturing Arkansas’s secret execution drugs.
Lauer reports that an “execution drug obtained by the Arkansas prison system this month appears to have been made by a subsidiary of Pfizer, even though the pharmaceutical giant has said it doesn’t want its drugs to be used in executions.”
The AP obtained redacted photos of the drug label for vecuronium bromide from the Arkansas Department of Correction on Monday, which appear to match the label of a drug manufactured by a Pfizer subsidiary.
Determining the origin of execution drugs has become incredibly difficult since the GOP-led legislature passed an execution secrecy law last year, requiring the state to keep the details about execution drugs secret, including who manufactured and sold the drugs.
Read Lauer’s story — it sure looks like Pfizer’s stated “comprehensive strategy” to stop subsidiaries from selling drugs for use for capital punishment may have hit a snag in Arkansas.