Germany stops shipment of death penalty drug to US

Hats off to Germany's minister of health Philipp Rösler (FDP) for issuing a directive to German pharmaceutical companies  that they NOT ship sodium thiopental to the US, since the drug is used in the US to execute prisoners.

Several U.S. states currently face supply shortages after the sole American producer ceased production of the drug due to objections by authorities in Italy, where the company had been making it lately.

Sodium thiopental in the U.S. is used as part of a three-drug combination for lethal injections in 35 states, but across Europe it is used as an anesthetic.

As U.S. states started facing shortages in the fall, they began searching abroad for sources of the drug, but one of them dried up in November when the British government banned exports of sodium thiopental for use in executions.

Germany, Italy and Britain banned capital punishment after World War II. In 2008, the EU issued a declaration against the death penalty and has lobbied for its abolition worldwide.

Frank Ulrich Montgomery, vice president of the German Medical Association, told The Associated Press the nation's doctors are throwing their support behind a call by the Health Ministry for German drug companies and distributors to reject U.S. requests for the drug.

"We are calling on the German pharmaceutical industry to send a clear signal that it recognizes its ethical responsibility and refrain from selling any drugs to the United States that could be used in carrying out the death penalty," Montgomery said.

Ulrich Reitz writes:

Leider werden die USA die Todesstrafe nicht abschaffen, nur weil sie gerade mal zu wenig Gift haben. Aber Deutsche dürfen sich nicht zu Mittätern machen.  {...}Die USA, die sich als religiöse Nation verstehen, stellen mit der Todesstrafe ihre archaische, alttestamentarische Tradition über das christliche Tötungs-Verbot. Sie schaden damit ihrem Ruf in der westlichen Welt und schwächen im Menschenrechts-Dialog mit Diktaturen ihre Position. Das ist ihnen offenkundig gleichgültig.

(Unfortunately the US will not abolish the death penalty just becuase they lack the chemical poison. But Germans should not make themseleves accomplices....The USA, which sees itself has a religious country, puts the archaic Old Testament tradition of death penalty above the Christian prohibition of killing.  It damages its repubation in the West and weakens its position in the human rights dialogue with dictators. Apparently (the US) just doesn't care.)

On the abolishment of the death penalty in Germany, see my blog post on Friedrich Wilhelm Wagner.

Comments

[Strahler 70]

Which philospher said every society has to be judged by its prisons? It's not only the death penalty, that excludes the US from modern, civilized nations, it's also the fact that the US has 10x as much people per capita imprisoned than other democracies, including an advanced prison industrial complex demanding and lobbying more and harsher laws.
Is it really a paradox the US has the highest crime rates in the world?

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[John in Michigan, USA]

@Strahler 70:

The US does NOT have the highest crime rates in the world, that is pure fantasy.

The most recent international data I could easily find is from this Dutch survey ending in 2003/4. You will see there has been steady improvement since 1988 and we are now just a tiny bit above average (see Fig. 3-4, pp. 44-45):

http://rechten.uvt.nl/icvs/pdffiles/ICVS2004_05.pdf

Since 2004 there has been continued improvement. This only covers N. America and Europe; if you compare globally, we are well below average (for murders at least):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_murder_rate

Social policies put in place during the 60's, which treated crime as a (mostly) socio-economic problem instead of a (mostly) police problem, helped cause the historically low US crime rate to skyrocket. Starting in the late 80's, these failed policies were mostly abandoned, and crime levels have now returned to our moderate, historic norm, which is comparable to Europe (although slightly higher on average).

The hangover of these high rates and failed policies is a US prison system with far too many people in it. That problem will improve with time, since the young adults today will not be imprisoned at anything near the rate of their parents. We could improve it even more if we ended the absurd war on (some) drugs.

The death penalty will always be controversial, but it is actually quite rare in the US. It would be interesting to compare it to the rate of postpartum infant euthanasia in Europe (for example).