Bowling Green is perhaps best known as the home of the General Motors Co. assembly plant where Chevrolet Corvettes are manufactured and the birthplace of the mid-20th century food sage Duncan Hines. A decade ago there were still farms on the outskirts of town. Kentucky’s third-largest city, with 74,000 residents, Bowling Green today is crisscrossed with strip malls and highways. While there’s some bus service and a smattering of bike lanes, most people get around by car, and rush-hour traffic can be heavy. Residents say there’s not much to do besides eat, and there are plenty of options for that: The official web page for the Bowling Green Area Convention and Visitors Bureau boasts that, “according to local lore,” the city has more restaurants per capita than any other in the US.

Bowling Green can now boast of something else: It’s Ozempictown, USA. Kentucky has the highest concentration of people with weight-loss drug prescriptions in the country, according to data from PurpleLab Inc., which tracks most scripts covered by insurance companies. In Bowling Green and its surrounding area, at least 4% of residents have received prescriptions to take one of these medications in the past year or so—putting it ahead of other major population centers in the state. (For comparison, prescription rates in Brooklyn, New York, and the Miami area are closer to 1%.) And these are conservative estimates. PurpleLab doesn’t count people who are paying out of pocket or using copycat versions of the drugs often sold at smaller pharmacies, online telehealth operations and medical spas, which are significant and growing parts of the weight-loss drug economy, particularly in Bowling Green. The drugs’ proliferation in the city is even more impressive when you consider that Kentucky’s state Medicaid program doesn’t cover them.