Stripper: Pharma firm used me to push fentanyl to doctors — now Emily Blunt’s playing me on Netflix

nypost.com:

Netflix film “Pain Hustlers,” released Friday and starring Emily Blunt, Chris Evans and Catherine O’Hara.. Blunt plays Liza Drake, a blue-collar single mom who just lost her job and is trying to make ends meet.

She lands a job at a failing pharmaceutical company following a chance meeting with sales rep Pete Brenner (Evans) who lures her down a morally-bankrupt path as she becomes a cog in a dangerous racketeering scheme that involves bribing doctors to give out a fentanyl-based drug — a story based on Insys.Insys Therapeutics Subsys spray was approved by the FDA in 2012 solely to give cancer patients relief from intense “breakthrough” pain.But Insys bribed doctors to give it to people who did not have cancer, and then defrauded health insurers who did not want to cover it for non-cancer patients.The corruption plot is the latest chapter of the opioid epidemic to get a screen treatment, after Hulu’s “Dopesick” miniseries which starred Michael Keaton as a doctor who became as addicted as his patients, and Netflix’s “Empire of Pain” about the Sackler family, whose Purdue pharmaceuticals fueled the crisis.Lee went to prison for more than a year for her part in the plot, with a jury hearing that she gave a doctor a lap dance as part of the scheme — although she still protests her innocence.Lee’s part in the opioid crisis began when she danced for Burlakoff in summer 2012.

She told him she was saving money for a new life as a Michigan State University student. In return, she said, “I remember him telling me he was a VP sales manager in pharmaceuticals and thought that dancers were the best sales people.