Fogbow

A parents' lawsuit accuses Amazon of selling suicide kits to teenagers

The parents of 16-year-old Kristine Jónsson of Ohio and the parents of 17-year-old Ethan McCarthy of West Virginia say the retail giant assisted in the deaths of the two minors by selling them sodium nitrite, a food preservative that is fatal at high levels of purity.

The complaint filed in California state court in September claims Amazon recommended that customers who purchased the chemical also buy a scale to measure the correct dose, an anti-vomiting drug and Amazon's edition of a handbook on assisted suicide.

"Amazon is selling a product that is as deadly as cyanide," Carrie Goldberg and Naomi Leeds, two attorneys for the families from the firm C.A. Goldberg, PLLC, said in a statement.

Goldberg and Leeds say there is a little-known antidote to sodium nitrite that people should know about: an injection of methylene blue. According to the lawsuit, Amazon sold ad space on several sodium nitrite product pages to a brand of methylene blue, but the product listing for Loudwolf's sodium nitrite did not mention the antidote's existence.