Arizona's Back-Alley Drug Dealer Revealed

Arizona officials didn't exactly get their stash of lethal injection drugs from a guy in a back alley, but as the human rights group Reprieve has revealed, their actual source – a fly-by-night British pharmaceutical company based out of the back of a driving school – is just barely a step up.

As we've been reporting here at Change.org over the last few months, states like Arizona and California that continue to sentence men and women to death have been struggling to find new sources for killer drugs after the only U.S. manufacturer ran out of its supply. That's forced corrections officials to look overseas – namely the United Kingdom – for ways to execute those on death row, with U.S. regulators choosing to be complicit by refusing to prosecute officials for importing non-FDA approved drugs; whereas you or I would be prosecuted for illicit drug possession if we did the same, it turns out it's perfectly okay to import powerful narcotics so long as the goal is state-sanctioned murder.

Under pressure from activists, British Business Secretary Vince Cable recently barred the export to the U.S. of one lethal injection drug, sodium thiopental, citing the U.K. government's opposition to the death penalty. Unfortunately, however, he's stood by and done nothing as British firms reap black market-level profits from exporting two to other drugs – potassium chloride and pancuronium bromide – to executioners in the land of the free.

U.S. officials have so far refused to divulge their sources. Now we perhaps know why.

An invoice obtained by Reprieve reveals that Arizona, presumably unable to find any reputable company willing to do business with the notoriously reactionary state, turned to a company called “Dream Pharma” to fill its stash of lethal injection drugs. Run by a man named Matt Alva, the company is based out the back of a building occupied by the El Gone Driving Academy, which sold the drugs at roughly 1,000 times their market value.

“It is shocking that Britain has allowed a fly-by-night company in the back of a driving academy to export sufficient drugs to take many lives,” says Reprieve Director Clive Stafford Smith. And rather pathetically, the British government -- rather than own up to its complicity in carrying out a form of punishment it publicly claims to oppose -- has claimed ignorance about the whole thing, with a spokesman for Secretary Cable recently maintaining he was unaware of allegations pharmaceutical companies in the U.K. were aiding American executions, despite the fact that Reprieve has repeatedly brought the issue to the good secretary's attention.

For its part, Dream Pharma claims it's not responsible for how the drugs it sold were used – except, of course, that when you sell lethal injection drugs to a state that practices capital punishment, there's a pretty damn good chance they'll be used (wait for it) to carry out lethal injections.

"Dream Pharma asserts that selling these drugs was no different from selling a hammer in a hardware shop," Smith observes. "The analogy is apposite only if we include one fact: the customer told the salesman that he planned to bludgeon someone to death with it outside the store.”

Dream Pharma clearly isn't going to stop selling lethal injection drugs: it makes too much money helping states like Arizona and California get their fix. That's why Secretary Cable needs to step in and live up to his rhetoric against capital punishment. Not down with state-sponsored killings? Tell Cable to live up to his word.

Have a story tip? Email us at criminaljusticetips@change.org. And keep up with the site using Facebook, Twitter and RSS.

Photo Credit: Reprieve