The Hard Sell: Crime and Punishment at an Opioid Startup by Evan Hughes. This book traces an Opioid startup and its hard fall. The book is set to be a Netflix release in 2023. called Pain Hustlers.
This book tells a story of widespread, flagrant abuse selling opioids. In fact, the company’s leaders looked sideways as profits soared. I found this to be an important book as the American opioid crisis remains critical, however the message is a bit weaker after reading five other books about the crisis. The press however have made this story relevant.
John Kapoor created pharmaceutical firm Insys Therapeutics. The company was certainly not the first to sell opioids. In fact it was competing with the Sackers’s Purdue Pharma. However Insys developed a unique approach to deliver fentanyl (called Subsys) quickly in to the body.
Subsys was sprayed under the tongue. The drug’s fentanyl impact began in less than 5 minutes, almost as quickly as taking the drug in an IV. Yet when not measured accurately, a single dose will kill you. And it did indeed kill a lot of people.
However, Insys simply pushed their innovation. To drive success Kapoor hired a number of aggressive young executives. The story reveals how Mike Babich, hired from Chicago-based Northern Trust who became a cut throat sales leader.
