Yet another corporation has found a way to profit from the death penalty. On April 5, 2024, reporting from Last Week Tonight with John Oliver revealed Connecticut-based chemical corporation Absolute Standards to be the secretive supplier of lethal injection drugs. It supplied the drugs that enabled the Trump administration’s killing spree of 13 people after a 17-year hiatus on federal executions.

Absolute Standards is funneling the execution drug pentobarbital to the federal government and other jurisdictions committed to state-sanctioned murder. Virtually the entire pharmaceutical industry has stopped supplying drugs for lethal injections, forcing the federal government and states to delay executions or even institute moratoriums on the death penalty. Absolute Standards — a Connecticut-based machine chemical manufacturer — has undermined the pharmaceutical industry’s bans by supplying unregulated pentobarbital. 

Absolute Standards is the latest corporation exposed for profiting from the death penalty. Earlier this year Allegro Industries supplied the gas mask Alabama used to fatally suffocate a man with nitrogen gas. However, with your support, over the past two years, advocates have successfully pushed workplace safety firm FDRsafety to withdraw from their contract with Alabama and major gas supplier Airgas to ban their nitrogen from use in executions. We can do it again. 

Tell Absolute Standards to join the legion of corporations abandoning this deeply reprehensible side hustle in the death penalty.

WIN!

Over 1,900 people responded to our call to action and sent emails to the executives at Absolute Standards. We’re relieved to share that we received word from Absolute Standards that they stopped the manufacturing and sale of pentobarbital in 2020 and will no longer supply lethal injection drugs, now or in the future. This is their first public commitment, and we will make sure to hold them accountable. Thank you for taking action.