While we know that the majority of Pharma brands, especially those who use pharmaceutical packaging companies, have a great reputation for ethical work, it can be a PR disaster for the industry when rogue companies and individuals perform in ways that bring the whole industry into disrepute.

You will undoubtedly have heard of John Kapoor, former chairman of Insys Therapeutics, who earlier this year was indicted for his role in bribing doctors to prescribe a highly addictive opioid medicine to their patients. This week, he was found guilty of racketeering conspiracy, a crime which may carry up to 20 years in federal prison in the US.

According to the AP News, the result of this trial is being heralded as a step by the US government in their fight against the country’s deadly opioid addiction crisis, with a belief that the outcome may ‘embolden’ authorities to go after top level staff at opioid manufacturers. Andrew Kolodny, co-director of opioid policy research at Brandeis University’s Heller School for Social Policy and Management, said that holding companies to account in the criminal courts is a necessity in the current climate: “Paying a fine or even civil litigation is inadequate if we want to deter corporations from killing people in their pursuit of profit,” he says. However, Kapoor’s lawyers say he and Insys were being blamed for opioid addiction unfairly while making up a tiny fraction of those available.

Kapoor and four other former employees of Insys Therapeutics were all convicted for scheming to bribe doctors with millions of dollars to prescribe higher levels of a fentanyl spray called Subsys, as well as misleading insurance companies to pay out for the drug, which was actually developed for cancer patients suffering extreme levels of pain from their treatments. Subsys can cost as much as $19,000 a month per patient according to reports. The bribes were cloaked in the guise of fake educational speaking gigs.

However, of all the evidence presented through the trial, these bribes were not the most sensational element, nor the sole reason it has received such huge negative PR for the pharmaceutical industry. With two former executives pleading guilty and testifying against Kapoor, some insight into other questions practices also came to light.

First up, the hiring of women who were “easy on the eyes” as sales staff, at the expense of any experience in the pharmaceutical sales field, because doctors “don’t want an unattractive person to walk through the door”, according to one former CEO. It was also reported that Kapoor met one of the senior sales managers at a ‘strip club’ because he believed she would participate in the scheme to pay off doctors and that the former dancer performed a lap dance for a doctor the company was entertaining.

A handful of doctors were also convicted in separate cases for their part in the scheme.

In the US, opioid overdoses have accounted for more than 400,000 deaths in less than 20 years, and figures suggest that 2 million people are addicted to opioid drugs, both legal and illegal.