MOSCOW (Sputnik) — The American Pharmacists Association (APhA) has voted on a policy aimed to discourage its members from providing drugs to be used in executions, the organization said in a statement.
"The American Pharmacists Association discourages pharmacist participation in executions on the basis that such activities are fundamentally contrary to the role of pharmacists as providers of health care," the new guidelines said.
"This new policy aligns APhA with the execution policies of other major health care associations including the American Medical Association, the American Nurses Association and the American Board of Anesthesiology," they said.
This policy could make it even harder for death-penalty states in the United States to find drugs for executions as their stocks begin to dry up. Utah has approved the use of firing squads as an alternative, while Tennessee has reinstated electric chairs in case lethal drugs become unavailable.
Lethal injections have come under increased scrutiny in the United States after a string of botched executions in Ohio, Arizona and Oklahoma in 2014.
