The Windy City slapped five pharmaceutical companies with a lawsuit accusing them of hiding the drawbacks of several popular prescription opioids, NBC News reports.

The city of Chicago filed the suit in a Cook County court, where it contended that pharma companies Actavis, Endo Health Solutions, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Purdue Pharma and Cephalon sold and promoted prescription opioids, such as OxyContin and Percocet, as well as their generic counterparts, despite knowing the drugs were highly addictive and potentially debilitating to patients’ long-term health.

Data shows that more than 250 million prescriptions for opioid narcotics were filled in 2010 alone, with sales of the addictive drugs increasing 16-fold in some places during the past decade.

For more information on the opiate addiction epidemic, click here.