As death tolls, overdoses and other costs related to Colorado’s opioid crisis rise, Denver and 12 other Colorado cities and counties are, in the hope of forcing drug companies who make and distribute opioids to share the financial burden, taking steps to sue them.

The 13 local governments will be joining a growing number of government agencies across the United States — including states such as Ohio and West Virginia and small communities such as Huerfano County — that are going to court to force the companies to pay a penalty and change their practices for marketing the drugs.

“We have experienced an exhorbitant cost,” said Denver Mayor Michael Hancock. “You don’t have to look much further than outside City Hall to see its impact.”

The city of Denver, which will take the lead on the lawsuit, last month solicited proposals from private law firms willing to assist in litigation. Prospective firms will be interviewed June 15, but it may be August before any complaints are filed in the courts because each city and county must get approval from various councils and boards to participate, said Denver City Attorney Kristin Bronson.

The governments on the list to join Denver are Adams, Arapahoe, Boulder, El Paso, Jefferson and Teller counties, as well as Broomfield, Aurora, Black Hawk, Commerce City, Northglenn and Hudson, according to documents obtained by The Denver Post through an open-records request. More could join, Bronson said.

The private law firm hired to assist in the litigation will not receive money up front but will be paid if the lawsuit is successful, Bronson said.

The idea to sue grew out of an opioid epidemic work group that Hancock created in 2017, but Denver decided there would be strength in numbers and invited other local governments to join.

“We understand there are different impacts in urban and rural communities, but there are strengths in working together,” Bronson said.

In Denver, opioid addiction has cost lives, increased hospital expenses and caused more people to engage in criminal activity to support their habits and then get sent to jail, Bronson said.

“Our public library has even been impacted,” she said.

Drug-overdose deaths have steadily increased in Colorado. In 2017 opioid painkillers claimed a documented 357 lives, a record for Colorado, according to preliminary figures from the state health department.

Between 2012 and 2014, Denver reported 346 emergency-room visits and 360 hospitalizations for prescription opioids, according to a Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment report on prescription drug use in the city. And 37 percent of the city’s 163 drug-overdose deaths in 2015 involved prescription opioids, the report said.

The outside law firm will help Denver and the other communities figure out how much they have spent to combat the epidemic and to treat addicts.

Similar lawsuits are taking place around the country as more evidence shows that drug manufacturers and distributors knew the risks associated with their products but still pushed doctors to prescribe them for chronic pain.

“Large opioid companies knew more about the risks of addiction with these drugs than they admitted,” Bronson said. “We do believe there is culpability.”

Some have compared the growing number of lawsuits against big pharma to tobacco lawsuits filed in the 1990s. Tobacco companies knew their cigarettes brought tremendous health risks but ignored the data, using slick marketing campaigns to encourage people to smoke.

Those lawsuits resulted in settlements in the hundreds of millions of dollars and forced changes in tobacco marketing and advertising. Anti-smoking campaigns also were born of those settlements.

Since 1999, Colorado has received nearly $1.7 billion in tobacco company payments, including a $107 million payout in March.

Hancock said he hopes the opioid litigation produces similar results.

“We’re pushing for a reform in the industry, as I’m sure other cities will do,” he said.

The first governments to file lawsuits against big pharma for the opioid crisis were Chicago and two California counties in 2014. Since then, Mississippi, West Virginia, Ohio, Delaware and New York City have sued.

In Colorado, Huerfano County was the first government to do so. In its lawsuit, Huerfano claims its residents were falsely induced to take highly addictive opioids for pain management. The drug manufacturers engaged in fraudulent and deceptive marketing, and distributors brought large amounts of opioids into the marketplace, the lawsuit said.

Attorney General Cynthia Coffman is part of a coalition of 41 state attorneys general who are investigating drug companies’ roles in the crisis. In September, they served subpoenas on eight of the country’s largest opioid manufacturers and distributors.

That investigation is ongoing, said Annie Skinner, a spokeswoman for Coffman.

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Updated June 11, 2018 at 12:53 p.m. Due to incomplete information provided by a source, this article incorrectly listed participants in a potential lawsuit. the article has been updated to note El Paso County has not joined the potential lawsuit against opioid manufacturers and distributors.