in communities where opioid pills are distributed frequently and in large quantities. This is especially true in West Virginia, Kentucky and Virginia.Newly unsealed documents in a landmark lawsuit Tuesday in Cleveland show the pressure within drug companies to sell opioids despite numerous red flags during the height of the epidemic.
The release of the exhibits — sworn depositions of executives, internal corporate emails and experts’ reports — also reveals the ignored concerns of some employees about the huge volume of pain pills streaming across the nation. In one exhibit, emails show that a Purdue Pharma executive received an order from a distributor for 115,200 oxycodone pills, which was nearly twice as large as that distributor’s average order over the previous three months. The order came in at 4:15 p.m., according to the emails sent in October 2009.In another of the exhibits, Nathan J.