Pain Hustlers: Film Tie-in

‘A pacey crime caper set against the backdrop of the opioid crisis . . . When I tell you that reading [this] is like watching a Scorsese film, you will assume I am exaggerating. Pick it up and tell me I’m wrong.’ Patrick Radden Keefe, The New York Times Soon to be a Netflix film starring Emily Blunt The inside story of a band of entrepreneurial upstarts who made millions selling painkillers – until their scheme unravelled, placing them at the centre of a landmark criminal trial. In the early 2000s, John Kapoor had already amassed a small fortune in pharmaceuticals when he founded Insys Therapeutics. A boom time for painkillers, he had developed a novel formulation of fentanyl, the most potent opioid on the market. Kapoor, a brilliant scientist with relentless business instincts, was eager to make the most of his innovation. But there was a problem: the drug was a niche product, approved only for cancer patients in dire condition. So he recruited an ambitious, persuasive team, who employed a variety of deceptive techniques, from zeroing in on suspect doctors, to falsifying patient records to deceiving insurance companies. Insys became a Wall Street sensation. That is, until insiders reached their breaking point and blew the whistle. They sparked a sprawling investigation that would lead to a dramatic courtroom battle, breaking new ground in the government’s fight to hold the drug industry accountable for the spread of addictive opioids. With colourful characters and true suspense, Pain Hustlers lays bare the pharma playbook. Evan Hughes offers a bracing look not just at Insys, but at how opioids are sold at the point they first enter the national bloodstream – in the doctor’s office.