Use Fentanyl for all state executions

Convicted murderer Carey Dean Moore was executed in a Nebraska prison just before 11 am on Tuesday, August 14. He was the first condemned prisoner to die by injection of a new lethal drug cocktail that includes fentanyl – a synthetic opioid that has caused thousands of overdose deaths across Canada and the USA in the past year.

It's a perfect use for this drug.

Fentanyl is 50 to 100 times more powerful than morphine. Drug dealers add it to their products because it's cheap and it produces a powerful high. It makes heroin even stronger and cheaper, but dosing is a challenge. A grain too much and – oops – you've killed your customer.

Let fentanyl become synonymous with death by execution.

Heroin costs about $60,000 per kilogram to manufacture. Fentanyl is a bargain at just $2-3,000 per kg. And, just three grains of fentanyl, apparently, is enough to kill a human being.

It's not just heroin addicts that are dying from fentanyl poisoning. Recreational drug users, too, are being slaughtered by dealers secretly adding fentanyl to their cocaine, ecstasy, even marijuana. It's a bigger, better high. And then you die.

The state of Nebraska was the first US jurisdiction to use fentanyl to execute a condemned prisoner. I hope it won't be the last. A shortage of other drugs has led capital punishment states in the US to get creative. Fentanyl, is the perfect choice.

Every US state should follow Nebraska's lead. If prisoners are to be executed, Fentanyl should be the drug of choice. And we should talk all about it. Often. Loud. Let Fentanyl become synonymous with execution and death. Let it be publicly recognized as the go-to pharmaceutical for executions.

Maybe then, people might stop taking it for a cheap thrill.