* 
 
 That same pharmacy is suspected of being the source of Missouri’s pentobarbital, according to Cull, and it is not licensed to sell drugs in that state, either. “The procurement of pentobarbital by the Louisiana Department of Corrections continues to be shrouded in secrecy, insulating the State from public or legal scrutiny,” Cull said in an email to The Lens. Pilate was aware of the identity of the compounding pharmacy that had supplied the lethal pentobarbital, but was ordered by a federal court to abstain from carrying out any legal investigation into the quality of the drug or the standards maintained by the drug outlet. Local newspapers revealed that Louisiana has also tried to procure compounded pentobarbital from the Apothecary Shoppe, despite the fact that the pharmacy is not licensed in Louisiana and is therefore not lawfully allowed to distribute in the state. Questions regarding the type and mix of lethal injection drugs have arisen since Dennis McGuire “appeared to gasp several times and took more than 15 minutes to die” when he was executed Jan. 16 with a mix of sedative midazolam and the painkiller hydromorphone. “Why would they to for inspiration to a place where the only time this method was used in the history of the United States it led to a gruesome spectacle?” 
 
 The increasingly desperate attempts by death penalty states to acquire medicines to kill their inmates is the result of an ethical boycott led by the European Commission and many of the major pharmaceutical giants that have expressed their disgust at products created to heal patients being used instead to kill. “The whole idea of the three-drug process is that it would be quick,” said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Washington-based Death Penalty Information Center. “If it should get a lot longer the purpose of doing [lethal injections] for appearance would disappear … if they get longer I think everybody gets a bit uncomfortable.” 
 
 
 
 Dieter said it was likely that there would have to be substantial evidence that death by lethal injection had become excessively long and painful before a court might consider taking action and public opinion would turn.
– A new drug for fatal injections is not only hard to find, it takes twice as long to kill people. US death penalty states like Texas, Missouri, and Louisiana are struggling to find lethal drugs for capital punishment, thanks to a worldwide ethical embargo against pharmaceutical companies selling drugs to US departments of corrections, the Guardian reports. So those states are turning from a three-drug cocktail to one drug, pentobarbital—which takes an average of 20 minutes to kill rather than the cocktail's 10. But does the prolonged death equal inhumane treatment of the prisoner? An anesthesiologist says it's hard to know—there isn't enough research yet—but the way states are procuring pentobarbital raises additional questions. Texas, Missouri, and Louisiana simply asked pharmacies to make the drug (the New York Times slammed such states for entering "a largely unregulated world" of pharmaceuticals). But Louisiana is stuck: It couldn't get any pentobarbital to execute child-killer Christopher Sepulvado on Wednesday, The Lens reports. Officials could try some other drug combination, as Ohio did in executing inmate Dennis McGuire last month—but he spent 26 minutes gasping for breath, the AP reports, and his last words were, "I feel my whole body burning."