Texas Can't Have Its Mystery Execution Drugs, FDA Says
Texas was so impatient with the U.S. Food and Drug Adminsitration for withholding its execution drugs for nearly two years that it filed a lawsuit, demanding to know ASAP whether it could have its drugs back. Yesterday, the FDA got back to the state with its decision: No.
The FDA has been hanging onto the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's shipment of 1,000 vials of sodium thiopental from an overseas maker since July 2015, when it seized the drugs from Houston's Bush Intercontinental Airport.
The feds believed the anesthetic drugs, used for lethal injection, weren't up to snuff on labeling laws and had not been properly approved by the FDA, then took them into custody to further examine them. After the FDA was apparently taking its sweet time, Texas, the all-time leader in executions, sued the agency in January 2017 for taking too long to release a decision.
“There are only two reasons why the FDA would take 17 months to make a final decision on Texas’s importation of thiopental sodium: gross incompetence or willful obstruction,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement at the time. “The FDA has an obligation to fulfill its responsibilities faithfully and in a timely manner. My office will not allow the FDA to sit on its hands and thereby impair Texas’ responsibility to carry out its law enforcement duties.”
Read more: http://www.houstonpress.com/news/fda-to-texas-you-cant-have-your-execution-drugs-9375794
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