Opioid Crisis: Indian-American Pharma CEO Jailed

[Riaz Haq]

Dr. John Nath Kapoor, Indian-American CEO of Insys Therapeutics, has been found guilty of conspiring to recklessly and illegally boost profits from the opioid painkiller Subsys, a fentanyl spray designed to be absorbed under the tongue, according to multiple media reports.

Dr. John Nath Kapoor

In 2018, data showed that opioid overdoses killed an average of 128 Americans everyday.  Last year, nearly 70,000 Americans died of opioid overdoses.  Opioid abuse has become a public health crisis with devastating social, economic and health consequences in vast swathes of America.  In spite of knowing the dangers opioids posed, drug companies like Kapoor's Insys heavily promoted such drugs by paying physicians to overprescribe, resulting in enormous company profits.

Kapoor has received five and a half years jail sentence.  CBS has reported that others working for him have been sentenced to serve from 12 to 33 months, in part because of the testimony of the government's star witness: Alec Burlakoff, the senior vice president of sales at Insys, who had pled guilty and cooperated with prosecutors.

Kapoor, billionaire entrepreneur and former CEO of Insys Therapeutics, was born in Amritsar, India. He studied pharmacy at Institute of Chemical Technology in Mumbai, India. He received a doctorate in medicinal chemistry from University of Buffalo, New York, in 1972. He became a major American success story until he was arrested and charged in 2017 under RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) laws.

Earlier in June, 2020, three Indian-American physicians were found to have faked results of a hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) study they published in New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet. Both journals were forced to retract it.

Last year, an Indian-American operator and several Indian-American and other doctors participating in a home health care business in Silicon Valley were charged by US federal prosecutors with fraud.

India and Pakistan are among the top three sources of foreign medical professionals in the United States.

Related Links:

Haq's Musings

South Asia Investor Review

Indian-American COVID19 Researchers Face Fraud Charges

Indian-American Operator Charged With Fraud By US Federal Prosecutors

India and Pakistan Among Top Sources of Foreign Medical Professionals

Howdy Modi Rally Exposes Indian-Americans to Hypocrisy Charges

Silicon Valley India-American Congressman Rejects Hindutva, Joins P...

H1-B Visa Abuse By Indian-American Body Shops

Silicon Valley Indian-American Congressman Ro Khanna Defeats Pro-Mo...

Riaz Haq's Youtube Channel

PakAlumni Social Network

[Riaz Haq]

US Charges 2 Surat Companies For Smuggling Chemicals Used To Make Opioids - IndiaWest Journal News

https://indiawest.com/us-charges-2-surat-companies-for-smuggling-ch...

NEW YORK, NY (Reuters) – Two Indian chemical companies have been indicted for allegedly importing ingredients for the highly addictive opioid fentanyl into the United States and Mexico, the U.S. Department of Justice said on January 6.

Athos Chemicals and Raxuter Chemicals, both based in Gujarat, were each charged in Brooklyn with distributing the ingredients and conspiring to distribute them.

Raxuter and senior executive Bhavesh Lathiya, 36, were also charged with smuggling, and introducing misbranded drugs into interstate commerce.

Lathiya was arrested on January 4 in New York and ordered detained pending trial, after prosecutors called him a flight risk and a substantial danger to the community.

“The Justice Department is targeting every link in fentanyl trafficking supply chains that span countries and continents and too often end in tragedy in the United States,” U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said.

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid about 50 times more powerful than heroin and 100 times more powerful than morphine.

Opioids accounted for about 82,000 U.S. deaths in 2022, ten times the number in 1999, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Prosecutors said that since February 2024, the defendants supplied “precursor” chemicals they knew would be used to make fentanyl, and hid their efforts by mislabeling packages, falsifying customs forms, and making false declarations at border crossings.