The US Food and Drug Administration has warned the state of Ohio that it would be breaking the law if it were to import drugs from overseas for use in lethal injections.

The Food and Drug Administration letter, which was obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by Buzzfeed News and released publicly after that, was sent in June to the Ohio department of rehabilitation and correction. It said that the FDA had become aware of the department’s intention “to obtain bulk and finished dosage forms of sodium thiopental”, which was once the only drug used in Ohio executions but is now one of several options available.

“Please note that there is no FDA-approved application for sodium thiopental, and it is illegal to import an unapproved new drug into the United States,” Domenic Veneziano, the director of the FDA’s import operation, wrote.

An Ohio prisons spokeswoman, JoEllen Smith, confirmed to the Columbus Dispatch that state officials had received the letter and told the paper the state had not gone through with the overseas purchase.

“DRC continues to seek all legal means to obtain the drugs necessary to carry out court-ordered executions. This process has included multiple options,” Smith said.

Ohio’s intended supplier is still not known. Smith told the paper Ohio does not currently have a drug supply to carry out its next scheduled execution, that of Ronald Phillips, on 21 January 2016.

Ohio’s last execution was that of Dennis McGuire, who took nearly half an hour to die in January 2014. It was carried out with an experimental combination of the sedative midazolam and painkiller hydromorphone.

Many of the 34 death penalty states have measures in place to hide the identities of their suppliers in order to protect them.

The purchase of drugs for executions in the United States has become increasingly difficult. A European-led boycott and the end of US sodium thiopental production in 2011 has led states to explore other options.

“Since sodium thiopental is not available in the United States, we assume that this product would be purchased from an overseas source,” the FDA letter stated.



The letter explained to Ohio prison authorities that the purchase of such drugs from overseas would be illegal. The Ohio prison where executions are carried out successfully applied for an import license from the US Drug Enforcement Administration last year, according to documents obtained by the Associated Press. Whether they planned to use that license was not known at that time.

Ohio is not the first state to consider foreign manufacturers for sodium thiopental. In May Nebraska announced that it had paid $54,400 for execution drugs from an Indian company.