Prognosis
The Opioid Epidemic’s Latest Casualty May Be a Drugmaker That Fueled Crisis
Insys’s aggressive sales tactics led to criminal charges. It’s trying to reinvent itself as a “cannabinoid pioneer.”
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Sitting in a Boston courtroom in a dark, pinstriped suit, the former top sales executive at Insys Therapeutics Inc., Alec Burlakoff, listened as federal prosecutors read out crimes he and the company had allegedly committed.
Insys had bribed doctors and their employees with payments for sham medical events that often turned out to be parties. Physicians who didn’t write prescriptions for the company’s powerful opioid were cut off from the company’s money. There were lavish dinners, strip-club visits and gun-range outings, all of which led to booming sales of one of the world’s most powerful — and dangerous — pain drugs.