The Hard Sell

Crime and Punishment at an Opioid Startup. A medical crime story, in the vein of Empire of Pain and Bad Blood, concerned with fentanyl and drawing back the curtains in exposing the on-the-ground tactics employed in pharmaceutical sales.

'A tour de force' – Patrick Radden Keefe, author of Empire of Pain

From the doctor's office to the opioid crisis, The Hard Sell is the story of a pharmaceutical company that got Americans hooked on fentanyl – and how it was finally held to account. Now a Netflix Original Movie, Pain Hustlers, starring Emily Blunt and Chris Evans.

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 approved only for cancer patients in dire condition. So he recruited an avaricious team, who employed a variety of deceptive techniques, from 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, sparking a sprawling investigation in the government’s fight to hold the drug industry accountable in the spread of addictive opioids.

With colourful characters and true suspense, The Hard Sell 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 .