VILLE PLATTE, La. (KLFY) – The opioid situation in America has been described as a public health crisis by the FDA.

Evangeline Parish Sheriff Eddie Soileau says his lawsuit only scratches the surface of the issue in the state and especially in Evangeline Parish.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, Evangeline Parish has one of the highest concentrations of opioid prescriptions per person in the state and well above the national average.

The lawsuit says that the drug companies allow users to abuse the prescriptions “in order to expand the market for opioids and realize blockbuster profits, defendants sought to create a false perception of the safety and efficacy of opioids.”

It goes on to say, “defendants successfully created that false perception through a coordinated, sophisticated and highly deceptive marketing campaign that began in the late 1990s, became more aggressive in or about 2006, and continues to the present.”

The lawsuit shows state data that opioid-related deaths in Louisiana have nearly doubled from 155 in 2012 to 305 in 2016.

It also adds that Louisiana is one of eight states that has more opiod prescriptions than it has residents.

The lawsuit specifically sites that in Evangeline Parish alone, the prescription rate was over 959 morphine milligram equivalents per person.

In 2015, the national average was 640 per person.

Soileau is not the first Louisiana sheriff to sue a pharmaceutical company.

There are 15 other companies and doctors that have been sued as well.