The sole US manufacturer of a drug used for lethal injection executions in the United States announced Friday it would exit the market, raising new questions about states' ability to carry out capital punishment.
Illinois-based Hospira said in a statement it "will exit the sodium thiopental market and no longer attempt to resume production of its product, Pentothal."
The company said it had intended to make Pentothal at its Italian plant but that the Italian authorities had insisted "that we control the product all the way to the ultimate end user to prevent use in capital punishment."
It said, however, that "we could not prevent the drug from being diverted to departments of corrections for use in capital punishment procedures," which could expose the company to liability, Several US states have been forced to postpone executions because of a lack of sodium thiopental, an anaesthetic essential to the cocktail of lethal drugs administered to condemned inmates.