DALTON, Ga. — Claiming that “manufacturers aggressively promoted and pushed highly addictive, dangerous opioids, falsely representing to doctors that patients would rarely succumb to drug addiction,” Whitfield County has joined Chattooga County, Floyd County and the cities of Cartersville and Rome in a federal lawsuit against approximately 20 makers of opioid painkillers.

Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia in Rome, the lawsuit is a class action lawsuit that seeks to represent all the cities and counties in Georgia.

The goal of the lawsuit, according to a press release from attorneys in the case, is “to eliminate the hazard to public health and safety caused by the opioid epidemic and to recoup monies that have been spent, or will be spent, because of false, deceptive and unfair marketing and/or unlawful diversion of prescription opioids by manufacturers and distributors.”

“This is a significant national crisis, and it has touched us here as well,” said Whitfield County Attorney Robert Smalley. “This is just an effort by our local government to recoup some of the costs it has incurred if possible.”

Smalley says those costs are “significant.”

“We don’t know the level of proof the courts are going to require or how far back the court will allow us to go back or go forward,” he said. “There’s a lot of that that’s going to have to be determined. But we know the costs are significant both in human costs and in dollars.”

Smalley says the costs to the county include costs incurred by the health care system and social services as well as public safety and the legal system.

Whitfield County Board of Commissioners Chairman Lynn Laughter said the county owes it to its residents and taxpayers to try to recoup some of those costs.

“We don’t know exactly what they are at this point or what we might be able to recover,” she said.

More than 250 lawsuits have been filed nationwide by state and local governments against opioid makers and distributors. Almost all of them have consolidated. They are being heard by Judge Dan Polster, a U.S. District Court judge in Cleveland, Ohio, who was appointed by a federal commission.

Smalley said it is likely that the Georgia lawsuit will be consolidated with those other lawsuits.

According to press accounts, Polster seems to be trying to get the governments and drugmakers to agree to some sort of settlement.

“That does seem to be the push, and that’s one of the reasons for the urgency to go ahead and file now,” Smalley said. “Because these matters across the country do seem to be on a faster track, we wanted to make sure cities and counties here would be protected as well.”

Several drugmakers named in the lawsuit did not immediately respond to emails or phone messages left at their corporate headquarters Monday afternoon.

Dalton City Administrator Jason Parker said Monday night that City Council members were aware that other local governments were thinking about suing opioid makers but it isn’t something the council members have discussed.