Prosecutors: US conspiracy came amid slow sales of opioid
PHOENIX — A new mouth spray that delivered the powerful painkiller fentanyl to end-stage cancer patients wasn’t selling as well as anticipated. So drug company executives moved quickly to make its production worthwhile.
U.S. court records in the case against an immigrant billionaire who is one of Arizona’s wealthiest men describe the daunting market challenges that Insys Therapeutics founder John N. Kapoor and fellow executives faced after launching the opioid medication Subsys in 2012.
The highly addictive drug was going to cost a cancer patient up to thousands of dollars a month to control intolerable levels of pain. It could only be prescribed by a medical practitioner registered with the Drug Enforcement Administration, and it was among several cancer pain medicines already available.
Five years later, Subsys is at the heart of the case against Insys Therapeutics executives, including Kapoor, 74, of Phoenix, who is charged with leading a nationwide conspiracy to bribe doctors and pharmacists to widely prescribe the potent painkiller to people who didn’t need it.