Dr Jeffrey Bado received his first sales visit from a Purdue Pharma representative in September 2005. In the next five years, his prescriptions of OxyContin – the “jet fuel” of America’s opioid crisis, according to Pennsylvania’s attorney general – increased by 600%, as Purdue reps visited two to three times a week. Now, a lawsuit in the state seeks to hold the company accountable.

The lawsuit, filed 2 May by the state attorney general, Josh Shapiro, and announced on Tuesday, accuses Purdue Pharma, the Connecticut-based maker of OxyContin, of deceptive marketing and criminal negligence in pushing doctors to prescribe the opioid.

“We’ve lost lives, we’ve lost money and we’ve squandered opportunity,” said Shapiro in a press conference Tuesday. Meanwhile, opioids have been a “goldmine” for Purdue, which has made more than $35bn in revenue since OxyContin was released in 1996, he said. “While Purdue and its executives were profiting and lining their own pockets, they were leaving a path of loss, heartache and bills for someone else in Pennsylvania to pay,” he added.

Pennsylvania’s suit follows a wave of legal action against the pharmaceutical giant, and in some cases, certain members of the multibillionaire Sackler family, who own the company. More than three dozen states have sued Purdue for underplaying the risks of addiction, and a consolidation of 1,500-plus lawsuits filed by US cities and counties is currently playing out in a federal courthouse in Cleveland.

Pennsylvania’s lawsuit, however, is the first to allege in detail a prolific and calculated scheme of pushing drugs on prescribers – a ruthlessly profitable “marketing blitzkrieg” targeting doctors such as Bado, who was convicted of fraud and drug distribution felonies in 2016. According to the complaint, Pennsylvania, one of the hardest-hit states in the opioid crisis, received half a million sales visits by Purdue reps since 2007 – the highest of any state except California.

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Employees at a drug company accused of bribing doctors rapped and danced around a person dressed as a bottle of the highly addictive fentanyl spray in a video meant to motivate sales reps to push the drug.

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A member of the family that owns Purdue Pharma — which is being sued by more than 1,000 jurisdictions for its alleged role in seeding the opioid crisis with its pain medication OxyContin — has been awarded a patent for a treatment for opioid use disorder.