Questions raised about whether the state’s department of corrections broke the law to obtain the drug, which is at the heart of the US opioid epidemic 
 
 Nevada plans to carry out the first execution using fentanyl, a drug at the heart of the US opioid epidemic, on Wednesday. 
 
 The state intends to use a synthetic opioid – involved in more than 20,000 overdose deaths in 2016 alone – to kill Scott Dozier, a double murderer, after finding it difficult to obtain other drugs for Nevada’s first execution in 12 years because of opposition from pharmaceutical manufacturers. 
 
 But questions have been raised about whether Nevada’s department of corrections broke the law to obtain the fentanyl, and whether the multibillion dollar distribution company that provided the drug ignored evidence it was to be used in an execution. 
 
 Pills that kill: why are thousands dying from fentanyl abuse? Read more 
 
 Fentanyl has moved to the centre of the opioid epidemic as a powerful and dangerous illicit powder, one hundred times more potent than morphine and frequently mixed with heroin or pressed into fake prescription pills. But it is also sold as a prescription painkiller, including a version for injection which can kill in higher dosages. 
 
 “Using fentanyl in an execution is particularly strange and confusing because of its place in the opioid epidemic,” said the legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Nevada, Amy Rose. “But on top of that it’s never been used in an execution before. It’s extremely experimental. There is a very real risk of a botched execution.” 
 
 Dozier will be injected with fentanyl and two other drugs. One of them is a sedative, midazolam, involved in a number of executions where the condemned man has been seen convulsing, gasping and in evident pain before death. 
 
 “It has been at the centre of executions that have gone visibly wrong in every single state in which it has been used,” said Maya Foa, the director of the anti-death penalty group Reprieve. “Now it’s being used with fentanyl. This is an entirely novel protocol across the United States.” 
 
 Foa said that states are usually obliged by the appeals process to subject the planned method of execution to legal scrutiny, particularly when a new drug protocol is being used. But Dozier has waved appeals and said he wants to die so the combination of medicines to be used to kill him has not been examined in court. 
 
 Death penalty states have been forced to find different cocktails of drugs for executions in the face of opposition from manufacturers to having their medicines used in lethal injections . That has led states to try whatever mix of drugs they can buy, often in secrecy. 
 
 The Nevada authorities refused to make public how they obtained the fentanyl and other drugs, but last week the ACLU won a court ruling forcing the department of corrections to hand over invoices. They show that it placed multiple small orders over a number of months, sometimes just one day after the previous order. It is not clear if this was an attempt to avoid drawing the attention a single large order of fentanyl would bring. 
 
 Opioid crisis: lawmakers accuse drug executives of fueling epidemic Read more 
 
 The drugs were ordered from one of the US’s largest pharmaceutical distribution companies, Cardinal Health, which is among wholesalers facing a barrage of lawsuits accusing them of profiteering from the opioid epidemic by delivering vast quantities of prescription painkillers to small pharmacies and ignoring evidence they were being used by people addicted to the drugs. 
 
 Rose said the rights group is examining why the distributor delivered the drug to the Nevada prison authorities even after it was publicly known they intended to use fentanyl to kill Dozier. 
 
 “It’s concerning that Cardinal Health would sell it to the department of corrections if it knew the drugs would be used in executions,” she said. 
 
 Rose said the ACLU is seeking more documentation to see if the Nevada authorities “lied to Cardinal in any way”. 
 
 Last year, Cardinal Health paid a $44m fine for failing to adhere to regulations intended to prevent opioids falling into the hands of those addicted to the drugs. The company was not immediately available for comment. 
 
 The ACLU has also raised questions about the legality of the state’s actions in buying the drugs. The law allows only those doctors and medical institutions with a Drug Enforcement Administration-issued licence to obtain and administer scheduled medicines. Rose said it appears that the fentanyl was bought by one arm of the prison authorities with the necessary licence but then passed on to the execution site where there is no such authority to handle what is supposed to be a tightly controlled drug. 
 
 “The DEA licence they used to obtain these drugs is the regular department of corrections hospital clinic in Las Vegas. But the department of corrections doesn’t have a licence to administer the drugs at the execution,” she said. ||||| “They can put it out a week ahead of time because he’s not gonna challenge it,” said Jen Moreno, a staff attorney for the University of California Berkeley’s Death Penalty Clinic who specializes in lethal injection challenges. “They’re getting away with things that they probably wouldn’t get away with if he wasn’t a volunteer.” 
 
 Normally, such a protocol could trigger a years-long court battle. But since Dozier has “volunteered” to give up his appeals and face the execution chamber, in death penalty parlance, the fight over Dozier’s future is almost at an end. 
 
 Not only has fentanyl never been used in a U.S. execution, but Nevada also hasn’t executed an inmate in a dozen years. On Tuesday, just one week and a day before Dozier’s planned execution, Nevada unveiled its new, three-drug execution regimen. That protocol will include doses of midazolam, a controversial sedative deployed in several botched executions, fentanyl, and the paralytic drug cisatracurium. 
 
 Here’s what is: The inmate, convicted murderer Scott Dozier, wants to die. And if that wasn’t bizarre enough, the state of Nevada wants to execute Dozier on Wednesday using fentanyl — the synthetic opioid best known for helping to push the nationwide opioid epidemic out of control. 
 
 A death penalty state is slugging it out with civil rights lawyers over the planned execution of a death row inmate. That’s not so unusual. 
 
 Read more 
 
 A death penalty state is slugging it out with civil rights lawyers over the planned execution of a death row inmate. That’s not so unusual. 
 
 Here’s what is: The inmate, convicted murderer Scott Dozier, wants to die. And if that wasn’t bizarre enough, the state of Nevada wants to execute Dozier on Wednesday using fentanyl — the synthetic opioid best known for helping to push the nationwide opioid epidemic out of control. 
 
 Not only has fentanyl never been used in a U.S. execution, but Nevada also hasn’t executed an inmate in a dozen years. On Tuesday, just one week and a day before Dozier’s planned execution, Nevada unveiled its new, three-drug execution regimen. That protocol will include doses of midazolam, a controversial sedative deployed in several botched executions, fentanyl, and the paralytic drug cisatracurium. 
 
 Normally, such a protocol could trigger a years-long court battle. But since Dozier has “volunteered” to give up his appeals and face the execution chamber, in death penalty parlance, the fight over Dozier’s future is almost at an end. 
 
 “They can put it out a week ahead of time because he’s not gonna challenge it,” said Jen Moreno, a staff attorney for the University of California Berkeley’s Death Penalty Clinic who specializes in lethal injection challenges. “They’re getting away with things that they probably wouldn’t get away with if he wasn’t a volunteer.” 
 
 Read more: Death penalty states are looking for new ways to execute people 
 
 So far, the Nevada Department of Corrections has released a one-page press release and an execution manual with several redacted sections. Brooke Santina, a Nevada Department of Corrections spokesperson, told VICE News that agency protocol only requires them to release that information seven days prior to an execution. 
 
 “We are following our protocol exactly,” she said. 
 
 The American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada has already launched into litigation over the new execution plan. In papers filed Tuesday, the organization asked the state to turn over records explaining how and why it acquired the new execution drugs, and more details about how, exactly, Dozier’s execution will play out. 
 
 “Without this information being public, there’s no oversight as to how the execution will occur,” Lauren Kaufman, a staff attorney with the ACLU of Nevada, said Wednesday, shortly after a judge ordered the Nevada Department of Corrections to hand over some of those records. “Who is taking charge of this really most consequential action?” 
 
 Read more: Some of the most important details of Arkansas' execution spree will remain secret 
 
 Nevada opted to use fentanyl in Dozier’s execution amid a national shortage of lethal injection drugs. Because drug manufacturers and distributors are increasingly reluctant to let their wares be used in lethal injections, states have been forced to rewrite decades-old protocols, rely on untested drugs, and fight courtroom battles over their new execution plans. In March, Oklahoma announced that its lack of lethal injection drugs left it with no choice but to change its preferred method of execution to “nitrogen hypoxia,” which involves depriving prisoners of oxygen and has never been used in any state- or nation-sanctioned execution. 
 
 As Fordham University professor Deborah Denno wrote in a 2014 article, “Reliance on drugs may end up accomplishing what countless legal challenges could not: drug shortages have devastated this country’s execution process to an unparalleled degree.” 
 
 Originally, Nevada also planned to put Dozier to death in November, using diazepam — a drug better known by its brand name Valium — in place of the midazolam. But Clark County District Judge Jennifer Togliatti halted Dozier’s execution and ordered Nevada to drop cisatracurium from its execution protocol, ruling that the regimen could unconstitutionally mask signs of Dozier’s suffering if the diazepam and fentanyl were poorly administered. 
 
 Dozier was convicted of second-degree murder in 2005 and of first-degree murder with a deadly weapon and robbery with a deadly weapon in 2007, after authorities found two dismembered bodies. He has said that he hates life in prison. “I’ve got a surplus of time on my hands and a catastrophic dearth of intelligence, hilarity, and awesomeness,” Dozier told a VICE music editor in a fan letter in 2013. 
 
 Still, Dozier’s willingness to drop his appeals doesn’t mean that lawyers won’t go to court over his case. 
 
 “It doesn’t relieve the lawyer or the judicial system of their obligation to examine the legal issues in the case,” explained Sean O’Brien, a law professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law who’s argued several capital punishment cases. “Just because he wants to be executed, doesn’t mean the state gets to execute him in a cruel and unusual manner. No one is allowed to pick that.” 
 
 By the time the Nevada Supreme Court overturned Togliatti’s order in May, over procedural issues, Nevada’s supply of diazepam had expired. Midazolam, the state’s replacement, was first used in an execution in Florida in 2013. Its popularity in lethal injections has only grown over recent years, despite being used in botched executions in Alabama, Arizona, Ohio, and Oklahoma. 
 
 “We’ve kind of moved into the realm of human experimentation with executions,” O’Brien said. 
 
 The ACLU of Nevada isn’t seeking to delay Dozier’s execution. “At this point, Mr. Dozier is really the only person who is going to be able to halt his own execution,” Kaufman explained. “So if he were to change his mind, then absolutely he would be able to stop it.” 
 
 If the execution goes on as planned, Dozier will become the first person to die in Nevada’s new execution chamber. It cost about $860,000 to construct. 
 
 Tune in to VICE News Tonight on HBO on July 10 to hear an exclusive interview with Scott Dozier as he faces execution by an experimental drug cocktail including fentanyl. 
 
 Cover image: Nevada death row inmate Scott Dozier appears in a Las Vegas court via video on Wednesday, Nov. 8, 2017. (Michael Quine/Las Vegas Review-Journal)
– Critics are warning about the "very real risk of a botched execution" in what is to be the first US case of capital punishment using fentanyl. With manufacturers unwilling to sell any drugs to be used in executions, Nevada's Department of Corrections quietly purchased small doses of fentanyl from Cardinal Health over several months and plans to use the prescription painkiller in combination with paralytic drug cisatracurium and sedative midazolam in the state's first execution in 12 years, scheduled for Wednesday, per the Guardian and Vice. Critics, however, are putting up a fuss, and not only due to the secretive way officials went about acquiring the drug. Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid well known for its role in the opioid epidemic, has "never been used in an execution before. It's extremely experimental," as Amy Rose of the American Civil Liberties Union puts it. Especially concerning is the fact that the fentanyl will be mixed with midazolam, which "has been at the center of executions that have gone visibly wrong in every single state in which it has been used," says Maya Foa of anti-death penalty group Reprieve. She tells the Guardian execution strategies are normally reviewed by courts through inmate appeals. Not so in this case, as double murderer Scott Dozier—convicted of second-degree murder in 2005 and first-degree murder in 2007—accepts his fate and says he wants to die. It's unclear if there's enough opposition to stave off the execution, though the ACLU is looking into the legality of how Nevada obtained the fentanyl. But if it goes ahead, Gov. Brian Sandoval "is in danger of creating the very black market he is trying to eliminate," pharmaceutical expert Donald Downing argues at the Reno Gazette Journal.