Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall filed a lawsuit against Purdue Pharma LP claiming that the drugmaker deceptively marketed and sold its opioid drugs and jeopardized the state's public health.
The investigators are seeking both monetary damages and injunctive relief from the maker of opioid pain medications including OxyContin, MS Contin and Butrans.
Marshall's complaint accused the company and its units of misrepresenting the risks and benefits of opioid drugs and allowing such drugs to be widely prescribed for chronic pain conditions.
Purdue Pharma is already facing lawsuits from multiples states with New York being one of the latest to sue the company for its alleged role in the opioid crisis.
Alabama has the highest number of painkiller prescriptions per capita in the U.S. and the state's drug overdose death rate skyrocketed by 82% from 2006 to 2014, Marshall said.
The lawsuit was filed in the federal court in Montgomery, Ala., and is expected to be transferred to Cleveland, Ohio, as part of a national multi-district litigation.
The lawsuit comes after the Alabama Opioid Overdose and Addiction Council, which includes Marshall as co-chair, issued an action plan on Dec. 31, 2017, to address the state's overdose crisis.
