Can Europe end the death penalty in America?

Of the three drugs used in standard lethal injections, potassium chloride and pancuronium bromide are widely available. But sodium thiopental has been superseded by newer anesthetics. Few U.S. hospitals, if any, still use it, and even fewer manufacturers produce it worldwide. Most importantly, sodium thiopental only has a shelf life of about four years, making stockpiling the drug difficult given the lengthy and arduous appeals process for death-penalty cases. As a result of this vulnerable supply line, sodium thiopental has become a pressure point for activists in the U.S. and Europe.

Initially, individual European countries moved to cut off supply of the drug. British officials at first refused to restrict it, arguing that the anesthetic had legitimate medical uses, until activists provided data showing that Europe’s customers for the drug included U.S. prisons. Business Secretary Vince Cable then reversed course and imposed an export ban in November 2010, citing Britain’s longstanding support of the death penalty’s worldwide abolition. Hospira, the last U.S. company to market sodium thiopental, stopped production of the drug in January 2011 under intense pressure from authorities in Italy, where their pharmaceutical plant is located…

Sarah Ludford, a British member of the European Parliament and vice chair of its delegation to the U.S., helped lead the fight for a Europe-wide export ban. “I am proud to have helped lead the campaign to stop EU-produced medicines being hijacked for such appalling uses, in line with the UK and EU commitment to abolish the death penalty around the world,” she told me in a statement. “I am determined to continue ensuring that Europe is not complicit in the deaths of American citizens.”