Pharmacies don’t want to sell drugs to kill people, so what’s a government bent on carrying out the death penalty to do?

President Donald Trump had promised to reinstate the death penalty for federal offenses, and shortly before his first term ended, 13 executions were carried out, compared to a total of three for the previous 50 years.

When he took office for the second time, Trump reversed former President Joe Biden’s moratorium on the death penalty. However, it can take years for potential death penalty cases to become eligible.

Meanwhile, states with the death penalty on the books are struggling to perform executions, as the drugs are hard to get — with reluctant pharmacies presenting the biggest obstacle. So some states have added other methods, such as death by firing squad, which has become the primary method in Idaho. Since 2024, five states have adopted a method whereby nitrogen gas is forced into the condemned person’s airways through a face mask.

There are not a lot of ways to kill someone painlessly. Even lethal injections have resulted in botched executions — autopsies have shown, for example, that the lungs of those injected with phenobarbital suffered torturous drowning until they died.

So the Trump administration announced Friday that it will be adding other methods, such as the firing squad, gas asphyxiation, and electrocution, to make up the shortfall.

While it’s understandable that pharmacies don’t want to be branded as selling drugs of death, their refusal might lead to even more painful and cruel ways to administer the death penalty.