Pharma execs worse than drug dealers

Greed gets fueled by profits from fentanyl

Executives at the pharmaceutical company Insys Therapeutics are accused of bribing doctors to prescribe its powerful fentanyl spray — a highly addictive drug used to ease the intense pain of people battling cancer.

In some cases, authorities say patients didn’t even need the drug.

Some who used the drugmaker’s oral fentanyl spray reportedly died. Like Sarah Fuller, 32, a New Jersey woman who authorities allege fatally overdosed 15 months after being prescribed the oral spray, called Subsys. Her parents, and others, are suing Insys.

And now, a half-dozen executives at the beleaguered Arizona drugmaker are facing federal charges here in Boston.

Ex-Insys CEO Michael Babich pleaded guilty to conspiracy and mail fraud charges Wednesday after cutting a deal with prosecutors.

Later this month, five more former Insys execs, including its billionaire founder, John Kapoor, are set to go to trial in the Hub.

To Joanne Peterson, who works on the front lines of the opioid epidemic in the Bay State, these pharmaceutical company execs should be lumped in with drug dealers peddling opiates on the streets.

“To me, they’re worse,” Peterson told me.

“I hope they go to jail for a very long time and I hope the company is bankrupt and (this) sends a message to any others that get any ideas to poison people for greed,” said Peterson, who runs Taunton-based Learn to Cope, a statewide support network for families coping with a loved one’s drug addiction.

“They all know that there’s a lot of money to be made when somebody becomes heavily addicted to something,” Peterson said of pharmaceutical companies. “The more people need it, the more money they make. They know what they’re doing.”

The trial begins as fentanyl has surpassed heroin as the deadliest drug in the country. According to data released last month, 18,335 people died from fentanyl overdoses, about 28.8 percent of all drug overdose deaths.

Insys execs doled out speaking fees to doctors to speak at bogus events in exchange for them prescribing fentanyl spray to more people and in higher doses, prosecutors said.

Peterson hopes authorities continue to go after drugmakers even more. “Something needs to change,” she said. “It’s just sickening.”