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| How Oregon's Death-Penalty Drugs Ended Up With a New York Firm |
| By theatlantic.com - Ford Vox |
| Published: 01/09/2012 |
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Since 1986, New York's Devos, Ltd, has steadily built a business with an annual revenue of $32.2 million handling overstocked, expired, or recalled drugs on pharmacy shelves throughout the nation. Operating as Guaranteed Returns, Devos is the industry leader in a specialized business called reverse pharmaceutical distribution. Reverse pharmaceutical distribution comes out of the need to carefully navigate the minefield of state and federal regulations surrounding controlled substances, and the equally difficult task of complying with hundreds of manufacturers' and wholesalers' strict rules for properly returning or reselling goods that lose all value once improperly stored or tampered with. After Oregon's Department of Corrections (ODOC) got word of Governor John Kitzhaber's November 2011 announcement that he'll no longer enforce the state's death penalty, its pharmacy unit rang up Guaranteed Returns, the reverse distributor of choice for most VA Hospitals. It's unclear if the decision to return rather than destroy the drugs ever reached Governor Kitzhaber's notice before being publicly reported in The Bend Bulletin on December 24. Once aware, the governor took no action and never acknowledged the glaring contradiction with his own recently announced stand against the death penalty, despite the fact that clamping down on America's supply of these drugs is the crux of a new international strategy that puts pressure on death-penalty states. Guaranteed Returns now possesses Oregon's lethal cocktail mixers, the ODOC told me. So deciding where to resell $18,000-worth of pentobarbital sodium, pancuronium bromide, and potassium chloride rests entirely with Guaranteed Returns and its CEO, Dean Volkes. Guaranteed Returns's business model typically involves resale to a pharmaceutical wholesaler or return to the original manufacturer for those drugs with an applicable return policy. The company also incinerates drugs that are damaged, expired, or have no marketable value. Read More. |
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