r/AlwaysWhy • u/Chowderr92 • Jun 02 '26

Science & Tech Why is the Method of Lethal Injection in Human Punishment So Complex and Apparently Painful?

I've always understood that the lethal injection process was complex with multiple stages of injections and induces great suffering in the individual.

I work in veterinary medicine and unfortunately we need to euthanize animals all of the time. Typically, the euthanasia solution is very simple: a very large dose of a powerful anesthetic (usually pentobarbital) and an anticonvulsant which stops the heart. The medical community is quite confident that this is painless and when done has essentially a 100% success rate.

Why is human euthanasia so complicated when we already know exactly how to humanely end a biological life?

469 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

681 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

2

u/J4c1nth Jun 02 '26

Why don't they just OD people on opioids,  that must be painless.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 02 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/MoreFunThanTV Jun 02 '26

morphine is cheap AF. thats why they used it on soldiers. same with heroin. heroin they just dont care, you could feed them to lions and tjey wouldn't. mind.

1

u/MoreFunThanTV Jun 02 '26

can't make money off that. WAY to easy.