Almost 400,000 people have died from overdoses involving prescription or illicit opioids over the past two decades, according to the CDC (AFP Photo/ALEX WONG) |
New York (AFP) - The founder of Insys Therapeutics on Thursday became the first head of a major US pharmaceutical to be convicted of bribing doctors to prescribe addictive painkillers blamed for fueling an opioid crisis that has claimed tens of thousands of lives.
John
Kapoor, 76, was found guilty of criminal conspiracy, along with four other
former executives of the Arizona-based firm.
The former
billionaire and his co-defendants, including regional sales director Sunrise
Lee, a former stripper, face up to 20 years in prison, and will be sentenced at
a later date.
Two other
executives pleaded guilty and testified at the trial in Boston which lasted a
little over two months.
"Today's
convictions mark the first successful prosecution of top pharmaceutical
executives for crimes related to the illicit marketing and prescribing of
opioids," federal prosecutor Andrew E. Lelling said in a statement.
"Just
as we would street-level drug dealers, we will hold pharmaceutical executives
responsible for fueling the opioid epidemic by recklessly and illegally
distributing these drugs, especially while conspiring to commit racketeering
along the way," he said.
In 2017,
President Donald Trump declared the opioid crisis a national public health
emergency.
Almost
400,000 people have died from overdoses involving prescription or illicit
opioids over the past two decades, according to the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention. Nearly 48,000 people died in 2017 alone from opiate overdose.
"This is a landmark prosecution that vindicated the public's interest in staunching the flow of opioids into our homes and streets," Lelling said.
Chart
showing US drug overdose death rates by opioid category, source
of opioids and
how it works (AFP Photo/Gal ROMA)
|
"This is a landmark prosecution that vindicated the public's interest in staunching the flow of opioids into our homes and streets," Lelling said.
To increase
sales of their fentanyl spray Subsys, a painkiller 50 to 100 times stronger
than morphine, Insys executives set up a system of large-scale bribes.
Between
2012 and 2015, they paid health professionals to prescribe large quantities of
the highly addictive drug, which was approved to alleviate severe pain in
terminal cancer patients.
Doctors
were encouraged to recommend the spray to patients who did not need it and also
in excessive doses.
Officially,
the bribes were paid as fees to doctors speaking at seminars for health
professionals to praise the benefits of the drug.
The
company's aggressive marketing tactics reportedly also included sales
representatives making a rap video to promote the drug.
In some
years, Insys paid more than $10 million in bribes in this way. The heads of the
firm also set up a scheme to mislead health insurance companies to reimburse
patients for the costs of the drug.
According
to Insys' annual report, Subsys sales reached $329.5 million in 2015.
The group
went public in 2013. Kapoor resigned from the board in October 2017, a few days
after his indictment.
No comments:
Post a Comment