USA - Death penalty states are taking elaborate steps to secure drugs for use in lethal injections, USA Today reports.

Death penalty states are taking elaborate steps to secure drugs for use in lethal injections, USA Today reports. The newspaper listed a series of news coming from different states in recent months. The first four people put to death this year were killed four different ways with various combinations of drugs. One each in Florida (Midazolam as firs drug in a three-drug protocol), Oklahoma (pentobarbital as firs drug in a three-drug protocol, Ohio (midazolam and hydromorphone in a 2-drug protocol) and Texas (pentobarbital in one-drug protocol ). California launched a “secret mission” to swap some of Arizona’s sodium thiopental in 2010. A team of California guards, picking up “the package” from Arizona, shuttled it north on Interstate 5, handing it off in the San Joaquin Valley to a second team that took it to San Quentin’s Death Row. Mississippi officials explored obtaining sedatives from a veterinary school. Kentucky discussed how to mask the purpose of ordered drugs to avoid “ethics or moral concerns.” More recently, Missouri corrections officer Dave Dormire testified that he personally delivered $11,000 to a pharmacy he found in the Yellow Pages for testing and purchasing of pentobarbital. “I take them cash,” he told lawyers suing to block an execution in January. The Associated Press says Texas will run out of pentobarbital by the end of this month, with three executions slated for April. Corrections spokesman Jason Clark says officials are looking for more drugs. Oklahoma solves the problem of embarrassed pharmacies by buying drugs with cash, avoiding a paper trail. “It was one way we could expend cash and help hide the identify of people we are paying money to,” says Jerry Massie, an Oklahoma corrections spokesman. Seven states have passed laws in recent years to keep drug providers secret.