The Terrifying Shortage No One Is Talking About
We’ve been ignoring scientists’ warnings for decades, and now their dire predictions are coming true: America is running out of poison. This is a crisis more urgent than California’s water shortage. “But what about water?” you might be asking. “People need it to live!” Well, people need poison to die. And we’ve been ignoring the poison drought for too long. We didn’t listen when Oklahoma had to delay executions because it ran out of sodium thiopental. We didn’t listen when the amount of pentobarbital in Texas dropped to levels so low that they could only execute seven people last year. Seven. In all of Texas. Does that seem normal to you?
Now, Arkansas is scrambling to perform as many executions as they can before the last of their midazolam expires at the end of the month. In some communities, they may have to choose between poisoning a murderer with an IQ in the range of mental disability and poisoning a murderer with severe mental illness. We can turn a blind eye no longer.
The ready availability of poison is something we take for granted here in the U.S., but in less fortunate places like the EU, there hasn’t been a single execution since 1997. Think about that for a minute. That means that if you were convicted of murder there, you wouldn’t get a dose of cool, beautiful pentobarbital — a luxury to which we’ve grown accustomed. You’d have to live out the remainder of your years in deplorable, disgusting conditions, learning a skill to contribute to society. I know it’s uncomfortable to imagine, but the U.S. running out of poison might not just be something our grandchildren must cope with. It could be sooner than we think.
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