Here's Why You've Never Heard Of The Drug At The Center Of 'Pain Hustlers'
"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links."
Netflix’s newest hit movie, Pain Hustlers, tells the story of a pharma company that bribed doctors to buy and prescribe its highly addictive opioid drug, Lonafen, only to have that medication result in overdoses, addiction, and a federal investigation.
The movie, which taps into the harrowing realities of the opioid crisis in America, has been getting a lot of attention lately. And that's partly because Pain Hustlers is actually based on a true story. This, of course, raises all kinds of questions about what’s real and what's made up in the plot. And there's another big question on everyone's minds: Is Lonafen, the opioid drug talked about in the movie, a real drug?
Here’s what you need to know.
What is Lonafen?
Lonafen is the main drug featured in Pain Hustlers. According to the movie, it’s a synthetic form of fentanyl that’s a potent painkiller for "breakthrough cancer pain."It’s also highly addictive. The drug is made by a fictional pharma company called Zanna.
The movie explores how Dr. Jack Neel (played by Andy Garcia) created Lonafen after his wife's death to help ease breakthrough pain in patients with cancer, but the drug began being prescribed to people who didn’t actually need that level of pain management. And a lot of people in the movie get addicted to the opioid.
Is it a real drug?
Nope—Lonafen is not real. It was made up for the movie, but it’s not completely fictional.
What drug is Lonafen based on?
Lonafen is actually based off of a real medication called Subsys, a fentanyl spray, which was made by Insys Therapeutics, an Arizona-based pharmaceutical company. The drug was released onto the market in 2012.
What is Subsys?
Subsys, a spray medication, uses a liquid form of fentanyl and belongs to a class of fentanyl products called TIRF drugs, which "are approved exclusively for the treatment of 'breakthrough' cancer pain," per The New York Times. The drug was created to help cancer patients with any pain that couldn't be managed by longer-acting opioids that they already took.
The drug was highly addictive, and Insys built a sales team who bribed doctors into prescribing the medication to patients, even when it wasn’t medically necessary. The movie which is based on a book by Evan Hughes called Pain Hustlers: Crime and Punishment at an Opioid Startup, explores the marketing and sales tactics used to sell the drug, and the repercussions that had.
By 2018, pharma exec John Kapoor, who founded Insys Therapeutics in the early 2000s, and six other senior Insys execs were charged with bribery and fraud. They pleaded not guilty, per the NYT.
A federal jury convicted Kapoor and four other Insys execs in 2019 on charges of racketeering (dishonest business dealings) conspiracy. And in 2020, Kapoor was sentenced to five and a half years in jail for “orchestrating a scheme to bribe practitioners to prescribe Subsys…often when medically unnecessary,” per the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
After Insys filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in June 2019, Subsys was sold to Wyoming-based BTcP Pharma, per PBS.
You Might Also Like
