The Washington Post released a story today concerning yet another a disturbing practice that our government has quietly added to its repertoire: drugging deportees against their will with powerful anti-psychotics such as Haldol… all without a court order. Citizens or no, this practice is simply despicable, especially the seeming causal regularity of it. Many former victims of the Soviet Union will remember its own draconian use of Haldol on political dissidents.
The sad fact of the matter, however, is that the legal status of this technique is ambiguous. But for the doctors and nurses involved in these cases, things are a little more clear: they should lose their licenses to practice medicine. Practices like these simply are not in compliance with the ethical standards required to practice medicine in this country. The article doesn’t name names, but they should be fairly easy to figure out via FOIA requests.