A US-based medical supply company that provides pharmaceuticals to prisons, including drugs used in executions. Its former subsidiary Tradex provided materials for use in prison labor programs.
Cardinal Health Inc, headquartered in Dublin, Ohio, is one of the largest medical distributors in the U.S., supplying almost 90% of U.S. hospitals, as well as pharmacies, private healthcare systems, physician offices and clinics, and more. The company sells pharmaceutical drugs throughout the U.S. and is a global manufacturer and distributor of medical and lab products.
Cardinal Health serves as a pharmaceutical wholesaler for state prison systems across the U.S., including, for example, Departments of Corrections in Arizona, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Maine, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Vermont, and Wisconsin, as well as the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP). Some of the company’s contracts with state prison agencies have been organized through the Minnesota Multistate Contracting Alliance for Pharmacy (MMCAP), a nationwide procurement group operated by the state of Minnesota. The company’s most recent contract for providing the BOP with medications ended in June 2024.
Among the drugs that Cardinal Health has provided to prisons are those used in executions. The company’s role in facilitating the death penalty became public in 2011, when Sister Helen Prejean, the so-called “Dead Man Walking nun,” called on Cardinal Health to recall a drug that it had provided to the Georgia Department of Corrections, which used it to develop a new protocol for lethal injections. The company refused, stating that, as a distributor, it does not “play a part in the determination…regarding the use of the products” it distributes.
The company later decided to comply with restrictions imposed by multiple drug manufacturers that do not wish for their products to be sold to U.S. prisons for this reason. Implementing this policy has proven difficult, as states often do not disclose the purpose of a drug they purchase. In 2022, for example, an incarcerated man in Nevada—sentenced to execution—alleged that Cardinal Health failed to track products that it knew the Nevada Department of Corrections “desired for use in capital punishment.” The case was ultimately dismissed by the Supreme Court of Nevada in May 2024.
Additionally, Cardinal Health used to provide materials to prison labor programs through its former subsidiary Tradex International. For example, between 2015 and 2017, Ohio Penal Industries (OPI) purchased over $1.2 million worth of goods from Tradex for use in its prison labor program. A 2021 lawsuit also revealed that Tradex’s rubber gloves were used by incarcerated workers in Pennsylvania’s prison labor programs. In January 2023, Tradex International was acquired by Tradex Holdings, bringing it into the private sector.