Amazon faces two lawsuits for selling suicide kits to teens

Yesterday ( October 9), foreign media reported that Amazon is facing a lawsuit from the parents of two teenagers who bought a deadly chemical (sodium nitrite) on Amazon and later used it to commit suicide. Amazon is facing a lawsuit accusing it of selling so-called suicide kits.

The lawsuit, filed in September in a California state court by two parents, alleges that Amazon recommends that customers who buy the chemical also buy a scale to measure the correct dose, an anti-nausea medication and an Amazon version of an assisted suicide manual.

In a statement, two family attorneys from CA Goldberg, PLLC confirmed that Amazon is selling a product that is as deadly as cyanide. This is different from Amazon selling ropes, knives, or other implements that can be used to kill, because the sodium nitrite sold is very pure (98-99%), has no household use, and ingesting a teaspoon is almost certainly fatal.

Sodium nitrite is used in low concentrations to preserve meats such as ham, bacon and hot dogs, and as a reagent in laboratories. It is a legal and widely used product available from retailers. However, sodium nitrite is not suitable for consumption and is prone to abuse, as people who ingest large amounts of it may experience breathing difficulties, abdominal pain and even death.

In past lawsuits, plaintiffs have said Amazon knew, or should have known, that it was selling sodium nitrite to customers who intended to use it to commit suicide but that it did not provide adequate warnings about the chemical.

The two lawyers in charge of the lawsuit said that methylene blue is a little-known antidote for sodium nitrite. According to the lawsuit, Amazon sold advertising space on several sodium nitrite product pages to a methylene blue brand Loudwolf, but Loudwolf did not mention the existence of the antidote in its sodium nitrite product listing.

Loudwolf did not respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit , but the lawyer who filed the lawsuit said Loudwolf's sodium nitrite is no longer for sale on Amazon.

In addition, foreign media reports show that earlier this year, the same law firm filed a lawsuit in Washington state claiming that Amazon sold the drug to two other people, one 27 years old and the other 17 years old, who also used the drug to commit suicide.

Sodium nitrite has been promoted on pro-suicide social platforms for several years because it is available through online vendors and consumer marketplaces such as Amazon. The York Times reported in February that 10 people had been identified as having committed suicide in the past two years using the chemical purchased on Amazon.

Records from the U.S. National Poison Data System show that there were 47 cases of sodium nitrite poisoning between 2015 and 2020, most of which occurred in 2019 and 2020.

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