State of California officials filed a lawsuit Monday alleging Purdue Pharmaceuticals utilized illegal and misleading marketing and sales practices that ultimately contributed to the opioid crisis nationwide, prompting a response from a Santa Clarita addiction expert.

State officials are suing Purdue Pharma Inc., several of its affiliates and former President and Board Member Dr. Richard Sackley on the grounds of unlawful practices in the marketing, sale and distribution of opioids, according to an announcement by State Attorney General Xavier Becerra.

“Holding these companies accountable for their practices is important so that those practices stop,” said Bob Sharits, program director at The Way Out Recovery Rehab Santa Clarita. “But also by doing it so publicly, it sends a statement and really educates about the dangers of opioids.”

The suit claims that Purdue mislead both healthcare professionals and patients concerning the addictive nature of opioids, and thus their potential for abuse.

Furthermore, the lawsuit alleges that Purdue distributed literature and other materials to healthcare professionals and patients that misrepresented the safety of its opioid products as part of its marketing tactics.

“It’s no secret that for the last 15 or 20 years, that the availability and quickness with which our medical community prescribes addictive medication, specifically opiates mostly, just set this ball in motion that created all these people who are becoming, almost accidentally, addicted,” Sharits said.

California officials joined Hawaii, Maine and the District of Columbia, which each filed their own individual suits against Purdue Monday.

More than 40 other states and approximately 2,000 local and tribal governments have also already filed against Purdue concerning their role in the nationwide opioid epidemic, according to officials with the attorney general’s office.

“We’re in a time where we’re starting to really make some moves against the threat of addiction,” Sharits said. “Restrictions on the amount that can be prescribed, restrictions on how much the doctors can prescribe, advertising practices, alternative medicines and so on.”

Opioids are the main contributor to drug overdose deaths in the United States, according to statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Since 1999, the number of opioid overdoses have quadrupled nationwide; in California, there were 2,196 opioid-related overdose deaths in 2017 alone, according to officials with the attorney general’s office.

In March 2019, a similar case brought by the state of Oklahoma against Purdue for their marketing practices was settled by a $270 million payment by Purdue to the state of Oklahoma.

A full copy of the complaint filed by Attorney General Becerra is available here.

Ed. Note: CNN contributed to this article.

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