Drug Shortages

Today, our State announced that they may not be able to perform the killing of an inmate due to a drug shortage.  We don’t do a lot of lethal injections, so experiencing a drug shortage seems silly.  The drug, or drugs of choice are ketamine, fentanyl, and potassium chloride.  We all like our special cocktails.

I bring up this issue because animal shelters experienced a shortage of sodium pentobarbital many years ago.  The shortage lasted over six months.  I have always required that we have a six-month supply on hand at all times.  After the storage, I changed that requirement to a year’s supply.

Although animal shelters are euthanizing fewer animals now, you can imagine the problem of shelter overcrowding should you stop euthanizing altogether.  I was trained early in the Boy Scouts to be prepared.  You should take inventory of your supplies and ensure you can meet a supply shortage.  Carrying a six-month supply might seem excessive until you are hit with a supply shortage.  Be prepared.

UPDATE

It seems that the guy’s attorneys sued the State against their cocktail Du Jour claiming that it was an untested concoction.  That is the problem with fad concoctions.  I’ve seen plenty in our business for remote chemical capture.  They are asking the State to kill their client using the tried and true sodium pentobarbital that we have used in our business for years.  I suspect the one downside of sodium pentobarbital is that it might burn upon administration, but I can’t say for sure because I’ve never used it on myself.  But to be clear, I always anesthetized animals first before administering sodium pentobarbital.

Although, personally, since people are killing themselves every day with fentanyl, I think the State could find someone on the street to test drive this new cocktail.  In the animal welfare business we seem to have a thing for using Acepromazine.  With the fast reversal when using Acepromazine, I always thought that you get the same results using water in the cocktail.  And who would be stupid enough to do that? That’s a hint for the State to not consider adding Acepromazine to their new fancy kill juice.  And using Ketamine… whose idea was that?  It’s like they got this recipe from their local drug pusher.  But to be honest, I used Ketamine in my anesthesia cocktail.

7/26/24 Update:

Prison officials are reporting that the cost of obtaining sodium pentobarbital is going to cost our prison system $200k for the upcoming execution.   Having overseen animal shelter budgets for years,  someone desperately needs to audit our prison system.  It is no wonder that government has become so expensive.  A $20 bottle of sodium pentobarbital is enough to execute a dozen inmates; where is the rest of the money going?

8/23/24 Update:

According to the news, the total cost of the execution is over $288k.  As mentioned above, the prison system is claiming that it costs $200k for sodium pentobarbital.  It would be so much cheaper if we just farmed out the euthanasia to our local veterinarians.  I just couldn’t let this drop, so I suggested to our State Officials that maybe an audit was in order.  I didn’t hear back from either of my State representatives.  Maybe this is just normal business in my State.