“Drug company founder John Kapoor arrested for alleged opioid scheme”

[ramus]

CBS News 10-27-17… “Drug company founder John Kapoor arrested for alleged opioid scheme”

https://kauilapele.wordpress.com/2017/10/28/cbs-news-10-27-17-drug-company-founder-john-kapoor-arrested-for-alleged-opioid-scheme/

This is perhaps an indication that these companies promoting “sell whatever drugs we can by pushing doctors to sell them for us” are finally being called out. Time to put an end to this. For these pharmaceutical giants, more and more people waking up is their main cause for “alarm”. This ain’t working anymore.

Some other executives were indicted back in December.

For those wondering about what kinds of things are opioids, check this WikiPedia entry.

“Federal agents arrested the founder of a major drug company in an early-morning raid Thursday on charges stemming from an alleged scheme to get doctors to illegally prescribe a powerful opioid to patients who don’t need it… Kapoor is the most significant pharmaceutical executive to be criminally charged in response to the nationwide opioid crisis.

“The company [Insys] makes a spray version of fentanyl, a highly addictive opioid intended only for cancer patients. Authorities allege Insys marketed the drug as part of a scheme to get non-cancer doctors to prescribe it. Numerous physicians were allegedly paid bribes by the company to push the painkilling drug.”

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Drug company founder John Kapoor arrested for alleged opioid scheme

Last Updated Oct 27, 2017 12:47 AM EDT

Federal agents arrested the founder of a major drug company in an early-morning raid Thursday on charges stemming from an alleged scheme to get doctors to illegally prescribe a powerful opioid to patients who don’t need it.

John Kapoor, 74, was taken into custody in Phoenix, Arizona. Kapoor is the billionaire founder and former CEO of the pharmaceutical company Insys Therapeutics. He faces charges including racketeering, conspiracy, bribery and fraud.


Kapoor is the most significant pharmaceutical executive to be criminally charged in response to the nationwide opioid crisis.

Brian Kelly, an attorney for Kapoor, said his client “is innocent of these charges and intends to fight the charges vigorously.”

Kapoor stepped down as CEO of Insys in January but still serves on its board. The company makes a spray version of fentanyl, a highly addictive opioid intended only for cancer patients.

Authorities allege Insys marketed the drug as part of a scheme to get non-cancer doctors to prescribe it. Numerous physicians were allegedly paid bribes by the company to push the painkilling drug.

CBS News correspondent Jim Axelrod reports Insys made 18,000 payments to doctors in 2016 that totaled more than $2 million. CBS News has identified headache doctors, back pain specialists and even a psychiatrist who received thousands of dollars to promote the drug last year.

A federal judge on Thursday set bail for Kapoor at $1 million and ordered him to wear a electronic monitoring bracelet and to surrender his passport, CBS News’ Pat Milton and Laura Strickler report.

Last December, six other Insys executives were indicted on federal charges in Boston in connection with the alleged scheme to bribe doctors to unnecessarily prescribe the painkilling drug.

[Justplain]

Canada’s largest medical regulator would bar doctors from accepting almost any gift from a pharmaceutical company under a proposed new ethics policy, part of a growing movement to reform the intimate and controversial relationship between industry and physicians.

http://nationalpost.com/news/canada/canadas-largest-medical-regulator-aims-to-put-an-end-to-controversial-gifts-from-drug-companies

[ramus]

NOW THEY NEED TO GO AFTER THE ..SACKLERS...WHO INVENTED OXYCONTIN TIME RELEASE .. AND THEN CONVINCED DOCTORS THAT THEY COULD PRESCRIBE IT WITH NO PROBLEMS OF ADDICTION. SINGLE HANDILY CREAKING THE BIGGEST ADDICTION PROBLEM IN THE WORLD.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/30/the-family-that-built-an-empire-of-pain

HERE IS JUST A PIECE OF AN ARTICLE BY THE NEW YORKER:

Over time, the origins of a clan’s largesse are largely forgotten, and we recall only the philanthropic legacy, prompted by the name on the building. According to Forbes, the Sacklers are now one of America’s richest families, with a collective net worth of thirteen billion dollars—more than the Rockefellers or the Mellons. The bulk of the Sacklers’ fortune has been accumulated only in recent decades, yet the source of their wealth is to most people as obscure as that of the robber barons. While the Sacklers are interviewed regularly on the subject of their generosity, they almost never speak publicly about the family business, Purdue Pharma—a privately held company, based in Stamford, Connecticut, that developed the prescription painkiller OxyContin. Upon its release, in 1995, OxyContin was hailed as a medical breakthrough, a long-lasting narcotic that could help patients suffering from moderate to severe pain. The drug became a blockbuster, and has reportedly generated some thirty-five billion dollars in revenue for Purdue.

But OxyContin is a controversial drug. Its sole active ingredient is oxycodone, a chemical cousin of heroin which is up to twice as powerful as morphine. In the past, doctors had been reluctant to prescribe strong opioids—as synthetic drugs derived from opium are known—except for acute cancer pain and end-of-life palliative care, because of a long-standing, and well-founded, fear about the addictive properties of these drugs. “Few drugs are as dangerous as the opioids,” David Kessler, the former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, told me.

Since 1999, two hundred thousand Americans have died from overdoses related to OxyContin and other prescription opioids. Many addicts, finding prescription painkillers too expensive or too difficult to obtain, have turned to heroin. According to the American Society of Addiction Medicine, four out of five people who try heroin today started with prescription painkillers. The most recent figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggest that a hundred and forty-five Americans now die every day from opioid overdoses.

Although the Sackler name can be found on dozens of buildings, Purdue’s Web site scarcely mentions the family, and a list of the company’s board of directors fails to include eight family members, from three generations, who serve in that capacity. “I don’t know how many rooms in different parts of the world I’ve given talks in that were named after the Sacklers,” Allen Frances, the former chair of psychiatry at Duke University School of Medicine, told me. “Their name has been pushed forward as the epitome of good works and of the fruits of the capitalist system. But, when it comes down to it, they’ve earned this fortune at the expense of millions of people who are addicted. It’s shocking how they have gotten away with it.”