Purdue Pharma’s sales force swept through New York State, visiting doctors and pharmacies nearly half a million times between 2006 and 2017 to promote OxyContin and other opioid painkillers. That is roughly 160 sales stops in the state each weekday during the height of the nation’s addiction crisis. During that time the sales force had the most visits per capita, 11,881 per 100,000 people, to rural Herkimer County (2017 population: 62,240) in the Mohawk Valley, according to the papers. State data shows that the county’s rate of emergency room visits involving opioids was nearly three times higher than New York City’s in 2017. Sales reps made more than 250 visits that year to one “pain-management facility with three locations in Central New York,” the court papers said.

Source: New York Times April 12, 2019 00:00 UTC