Last year, a drug distribution company accidentally shipped a box of propofol to the Missouri Department of Corrections. They've been trying to get it back with no luck. They want it back because Missouri intends to use the drug, a widely-used anesthetic, to execute a few guys.
The problem is that propofol is made in Europe. The EU is anti-death penalty. So what will happen if Missouri goes ahead with the executions is that the EU will slap export controls on the drug. Which means that propofol will be much harder to get for surgical use and probably a hell of a lot more expensive, as the drug distributors will have to implement rather strict tracking protocols.
Missouri governor Jay Nixon's response to all that can be summed up in two words: Fuck you.
Propofol is widely used because it has some advantages that are important to patients. It acts quickly, patients recover from it quickly and there is almost no post-anesthesia nausea. It's so good at what it's used for that something like for 80% or better of the procedures requiring general anesthesia.
But Nixon has two guys to execute and if that means that after your next colonoscopy you're going to have to spend the night in the hospital because you're groggy and barfing, well, fuck you.
And before you accuse me of being anti-death penalty, take a look at one of the guys that Missouri is going to execute. He killed (or participated in the killing of) two men who were acting as good samaritans. Those killers' cars had broken down at the side of the road several times. At least twice, men stopped to help and were murdered by the thugs. The other guy is a serial killer who killed people based on race and religion. As far as I'm concerned, the state could fasten them to railroad tracks and run freight trains over them.
Harming untold number of surgery patients as a side-effect of executing those guys is unacceptable. Nixon should change his mind. But he's a politician and if getting another office means tromping on bodies, that's what he'll do.
Texas is buying its execution drugs from a compounding pharmacy in the state as a way to avoid EU export controls. So the EU officially doesn't care.
It's sort of amazing that there can be a state governor that is dumber than Rick Perry, but Jay Nixon seems to have slipped below that mark.
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