A Connecticut chemicals manufacturer identified as having sold a lethal drug to the Trump administration for use in its execution spree has said that it will no longer produce the substance, The Intercept reports. John Criscio, the president of Absolute Standards, wrote to two Connecticut legislators that his company stopped manufacturing pentobarbital in December 2020. “We have no intention to resume any production or sale of pentobarbital,” Criscio added. The letter is the first formal acknowledgment by Criscio that his small family business was making pentobarbital, a barbiturate that has been used both by itself and in combination with other drugs to carry out lethal injection executions. The letter notes that the company had been registered with the Drug Enforcement Administration to manufacture pentobarbital. It makes no mention of whether the company provided execution drugs to the federal Bureau of Prisons.
Conservatives have been calling for an escalation of federal executions if Donald Trump retakes the White House. The Trump administration killed 13 people at the federal death chamber in Terre Haute, Ind., beginning in July 2020. In April, television news host John Oliver named Absolute Standards as the company that had supplied the Bureau of Prisons with execution drugs. As pharmaceutical manufacturers have restricted the use of their medicines in executions, it’s become increasingly difficult for prison officials to obtain drugs like pentobarbital. Since 2021, Connecticut officials have been concerned that Absolute Standards was selling its drugs to states for executions. States have gone to great lengths to shield the identities of their drug suppliers. Since 2011, more than a dozen states have enacted laws in efforts to hide information about their execution processes. After reviewing Criscio’s letter, a former BOP official familiar with the agency’s yearslong search for execution drugs wrote that it was not surprising that Absolute Standards reported receiving threats. “That is why BOP and DOJ attempted to keep their name out of the media as long as possible.”
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