The state of Ohio is suing five major American pharmaceutical firms for their role in creating the conditions that led to the opioid epidemic currently ravaging their state and large swaths of North America.

The suit filed Wednesday by Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine alleges that Purdue Pharma, Endo Health Solutions, Allegran, Johnson & Johnson and subisidiary Janssen, and Teva Pharmaceuticals and subsidiary Cephalon all engaged in disingenuous marketing campaigns about the effectiveness of prescription pain killers to treat chronic conditions and knowingly downplayed their addiction risks to doctors and patients.

"Defendants persuaded doctors and patients that what they had long known, that opioids are addictive drugs, unsafe in most circumstances for long-term use," DeWine said in an interview with NPR. "That the compassionate treatment of pain required opioids."

Often when people who are now addicted to pain meds run out in towns and neighborhoods without many healthcare options and limited employment opportunities, they often turn to prescription opioids' dirtier and stronger cousin: heroin. Drug cartels in Mexico are happy to meet rising demands for heroin from across the border and that has made the Drug War in Mexico the second deadliest conflict on Earth in 2016.

The production of opium plants or poppies has exploded in the past decade, along with various competing and intercooperating drug cartels throughout Mexico intimidating journalists and buying the inaction of local governments. After dealing with years of extortion and violence, local citizens have banded together in militias to try and defend their towns and villages from cartel forces that have claimed the lives of over 23,000 last year alone.

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