Why Doesn’t America Just Use Fentanyl for Lethal Injection? Nebraska Already Tried It, and the Drugmaker Sent a Lawyer
After Christa Pike Survives Two Doses of Pentobarbital, Armchair Policy Experts Ask the Obvious Question About the Opioid the Government Has Spent a Decade Telling Us Is Deadly
NASHVILLE, Tennessee | Americans woke up Thursday to a question so grimly logical that it could only be asked after a government failure: if the country is drowning in a drug so lethal that a few specks can kill a grown adult, why on earth is a state corrections department struggling to find a lethal drug?
The question arrived after death-row inmate Christa Pike survived Tennessee’s attempt to execute her on September 30. According to NPR’s report on the failed execution, officials administered two doses of a drug intended to be fatal, and Governor Bill Lee halted the state’s remaining execution this year and ordered a third-party review. The Tennessee Department of Correction said it followed every step of its established protocol.
Which is a bit like a pilot announcing that the plane did land, technically, on a different airport.
Just Use Fentanyl for Lethal Injection
- America spent a decade warning that a few specks of fentanyl can kill, then discovered that getting the government to legally buy any is harder than getting it to approve a parking permit.
- Nebraska is the only state to run a fentanyl execution and then admit it couldn’t reorder the supplies, which makes it the first state to run a one-time clearance sale on capital punishment.
- The drug cartel has a supply chain. The state has a binder. The binder has a table of contents. The table of contents has no entry for “what happens next.”
- Pfizer apparently looked at the world’s most notorious opioid and said, “Not like that.” Corporate ethics have never been more selective.
- Somewhere a procurement officer is explaining to a judge that the state “acquired the drugs lawfully,” which is also what every guy on every used car lot says.
Fentanyl Lethal Injection Is Not a Hypothetical, Because Nebraska Did It
Here is where the armchair experts get a rude surprise. Somebody already tried this. In August 2018, Nebraska became the first state in America to use fentanyl in an execution, as The Washington Post reported at the time. The condemned man, Carey Dean Moore, was pronounced dead at 10:47 a.m., according to the Chicago Sun-Times, after a four-drug combination that was also a first for the state.
So the answer to “why don’t we just use fentanyl?” is that we did, once, and it went about as smoothly as an execution can go. The Death Penalty Information Center’s account of Nebraska’s first execution in 21 years notes that the state had never carried out a lethal injection before that day.
Then the second part of the answer shows up, and it is not chemistry. It is paperwork.
Why Fentanyl Isn’t the Standard Execution Drug: The Supplier Will Not Take Your Call
Nebraska’s director of prisons acknowledged, in the middle of a lawsuit from a pharmaceutical company, that the state would not be able to buy those particular drugs again. Fentanyl, the state’s critics noted, is tightly controlled by law, and Nebraska declined to say where it got the stuff. German drugmaker Fresenius Kabi sued, claiming its products were improperly obtained for an execution. A judge let the execution proceed anyway.
Nevada had a similar plan for a 2018 execution involving fentanyl, but a drug company’s lawsuit halted it hours before the scheduled time. Pfizer, which makes the fentanyl in question, objected to its drug being used that way. Think about that. The government wants to use a drug, the manufacturer says no thank you, and the entire system grinds to a halt like a Wi-Fi password dispute at a family reunion.
Which exposes the basic dysfunction of American capital punishment. Legitimate pharmaceutical companies make medicine to keep people alive. They do not enjoy being listed on the vendor invoice for the opposite service. Europe cut off exports years ago. States started scrambling, bartering and buying from questionable sources. Meanwhile the shadowy underground chemical economy has no such scruples, which is why the CDC keeps publishing overdose numbers that read like casualty reports. You can review the CDC’s overdose prevention data and the DEA’s fentanyl awareness materials and notice a pattern: the black market has a supply chain, and the state has a vendor-relations problem.
Experts Warn Fentanyl Execution Plan Has One Tiny Flaw: It’s Still the Government
Supporters of the idea argue that if fentanyl can fell a person who merely handles a counterfeit pill, then a licensed state professional, standing in a purpose-built chamber with a written protocol, should be able to manage the outcome. This is a lovely theory that has never once met a state procurement office.
The Tennessee Department of Correction, remember, switched execution protocols nearly two years ago, and this is reportedly the second failed execution in the state this year. The agency is staffed with lawyers, auditors and a very thick binder. The binder said what to do if the first set of syringes did not work. It did not say what to do if the second set did not work either.
A fentanyl-based approach would, in theory, fix this. In practice it would simply move the failure to a new department. Instead of “the inmate is alive,” you would get “the shipment is delayed,” followed by “the supplier is suing,” followed by “we have reached out to the Office of the Attorney General about whether we are allowed to say where we bought it.”
The Real Reason Nobody Is Rushing to Copy Nebraska
Nebraska’s experiment answered a technical question and raised three legal ones. It showed that a state could improvise a four-drug combination with fentanyl as one component. It also showed that doing so means secrecy about suppliers, lawsuits from manufacturers, and a one-time purchase that the state admitted it could not repeat. That is not a protocol. That is a yard sale.
And there is the Eighth Amendment, which still prohibits cruel and unusual punishment even when everyone is annoyed about the shortage. Courts have wrestled with untested drug combinations for years, and a state that wants to use a freshly invented mixture is inviting a procession of attorneys with very good shoes.
So the honest answer to “why don’t we just use fentanyl?” turns out to be extremely boring. The medical community will not supply it, the law makes it hard to buy, the courts keep asking questions, and every time a state gets creative, someone files a motion. The government has proven it can create a crisis in a vial and then fail to find a single dependable one for its own use.
Congress Prepares the Bipartisan Commission on Syringe Adequacy
Lawmakers are expected to respond the way they always do: by forming a committee with a name nobody can say without a breath mint. Sources close to the process say the commission will hold eleven hearings, commission a $4 million consultant report and conclude that the ideal execution should be “less eventful.”
The consultants will recommend a plan C. Then they will recommend a plan D, in case Plan C is delayed by a lawsuit. Then they will bill for a plan E, which will be a laminated card reading “Please contact management.”
A Final Word From the Department of Obvious Conclusions
Fentanyl lethal injection is, in the end, a perfect snapshot of American policy: a drug the government calls a national emergency, a drug the government cannot legally buy, and a drug the manufacturers will not sell to the government for this purpose. Somewhere in that triangle, a state employee is staring at a flowchart, hoping nobody asks what happens if the arrow loops back to the beginning.
It would be funny if it were not, in Tennessee this week, a hospital room with a woman in critical condition and a governor announcing a review. That part is not a punchline. The punchline is the system built around it.
10 Humorous Observations
- A four-drug protocol is just a two-drug protocol with an assistant manager.
- The government wants one drug to do one job, and the drug industry wants nothing to do with it. It’s the most American group project in history.
- The word “protocol” now appears in every failed execution statement, usually right before the word “followed” and right after the word “unfortunately.”
- If a European export ban can create an American drug shortage, imagine what it could do to the toaster oven supply.
- The Eighth Amendment forbids cruel and unusual punishment, which is why states keep trying to find an execution method that is neither cruel nor unusual. Good luck with that.
- Tennessee’s emergency contingency plan reportedly includes a hospital, which is the only part of the protocol that worked as designed.
- Somewhere, a consultant is billing $400 an hour to recommend a plan C.
- Every time a state tries a new execution drug, a lawyer’s vacation home gets a new porch.
- A fentanyl-only protocol would simply move the failure from the injection room to the shipping department, which is where all government projects go to die.
- The most reliable lethal drug supply in America is still the one with no supplier ethics, no appropriations committee and no binder, which is the darkest compliment ever paid to the free market.
Disclaimer
This is satire. It is based on the documented failed execution attempt of Christa Pike in Tennessee on September 30, 2026, the governor’s suspension of the remaining executions this year, Nebraska’s 2018 execution of Carey Dean Moore (the first U.S. execution to use fentanyl), and the 2018 legal fight over Nevada’s planned execution drugs. The suggestion that states should adopt fentanyl as a standard lethal injection drug is a satirical question, not a policy proposal, medical recommendation or execution protocol. Nothing here is legal or medical advice.
This story is a collaboration between two sentient beings: the world’s oldest tenured professor and a philosophy major turned dairy farmer. Neither has been allowed near any state’s pharmaceutical procurement department, which is probably best for everyone.
Alan Nafzger was born in Lubbock, Texas, the son Swiss immigrants. He grew up on a dairy in Windthorst, north central Texas. He earned degrees from Midwestern State University (B.A. 1985) and Texas State University (M.A. 1987). University College Dublin (Ph.D. 1991). Dr. Nafzger has entertained and educated young people in Texas colleges for 37 years. Nafzger is best known for his dark novels and experimental screenwriting. His best know scripts to date are Lenin’s Body, produced in Russia by A-Media and Sea and Sky produced in The Philippines in the Tagalog language. In 1986, Nafzger wrote the iconic feminist western novel, Gina of Quitaque. He currently lives in Holloway, North London. Contact: [email protected]
