Thursday, November 9, 2017

US Feds bust drug dealer John N. Kapoor, who hates pot

John N. Kapoor is a drug dealer who deals in opioids. He also opposes legalizing marijuana — and gave half a million dollars to the campaign that defeated a marijuana legalization initiative in Arizona last year.

Kapoor, 74, isn’t your run-of-the-mill street dope dealer. When the feds caught up with him a couple weeks ago, he promptly posted a $1 million bail bond without batting an eyelash. Drug dealing has been very good to him.
Kapoor is the founder and majority owner of Arizona-based Insys Therapeutics Inc. On October 26 he was arrested and charged “with leading a nationwide conspiracy to profit by using bribes and fraud to cause the illegal distribution of a fentanyl spray intended for cancer patients” Subsys is a fentanyl preparation administered in spray form.

The FBI said, “The allegations of selling a highly addictive opioid cancer pain drug to patients who did not have cancer make them no better than street-level drug dealers.”

Conspiracy charges under RICO can result in a 20-year prison sentence and fines of up to twice the amount of money the defendants made from the conspiracy.
Kapoor’s opposition to pot was a business decision. Insys had developed a drug called Syndros, based on a synthetic form of THC that would have faced competition from legal marijuana. Kapoor knew well the dangers associated with fentanyl and the absence of dangers associated with marijuana. In many ways he is far worse than a street level drug dealer.