Tourists Trek to Mexico for 'Death in a Bottle' - Veterinary Drug Nembutal Said to Give Gentle Death to Terminally Ill

Don and Iris Flounders sought help from Exit International when he was diagnosed with mesothelioma, a terminal cancer. The couple traveled to Mexico in January to buy Nembutal so they can take their own lives when the time is right.
(ABC News)



If Don Flounders waits for the asbestos-related mesothelioma that is ravaging his lungs to kill him, it will be a slow, painful death.

Don and Iris Flounders sought help from Exit International when he was diagnosed with mesothelioma, a terminal cancer. The couple traveled to Mexico in January to buy Nembutal so they can take their own lives when the time is right.
(ABC News)
But one day -- maybe just weeks away and at the moment of his choosing -- the 78-year-old plans to drink a bitter mixture of alcohol and pentobarbital, a barbiturate that is used to euthanize pets.

Flounders told ABCNews.com that he flew halfway around the world from his native Australia to obtain the illegal drug in Mexico, which, like Switzerland, is fast becoming one of the recommended destinations for so-called death tourists.

The lethal drug, once widely available in the U.S. as a sleep aid and now used primarily in veterinary medicine, was an ingredient in the fatal cocktails that killed Marilyn Monroe and Judy Garland in the 1960s.

Since 2001, the pro-euthanasia group Exit International has helped nearly 300 people -- mostly Australians, New Zealanders and a handful of Americans -- to find what is being called "death in a bottle" in pet pharmacies in Mexico.