Happy thoughts, keep thinking happy thoughts!

Chicago filed a lawsuit against five major producers of pharmaceutical products on Tuesday, accusing the group of concealing the risks associated with certain painkillers. Saying that a drug maker "should never place its desire for profits above the health and well-being of its customers," the city said that the companies knew for years that certain pain-alleviating drugs were addictive and could prove debilitating in the long-term. 

The five companies named in the suit include Actavis, Endo Health Solutions, Janssen Pharmaceuticals —a unit of Johnson & Johnson, Purdue Pharma and Cephalon, a division of generic drug giant Teva. 

The suit contends that the drugs have ramped up addiction that has become a scourge in Chicago and other major cities. The lengthy suit, filed in a Cook County circuit court, alleges that the cohort of companies misused their dominance to broaden the market for "opium-like painkillers" called opoids. These prescription drugs included top-shelf brand names such as OxyContin and Percocet, as well as a clutch of generics. 

The drug makers "spent millions of dollars funding, assisting and encouraging doctors and front groups" to promote the drugs and broaden their reach among users afflicted with chronic pain, Chicago says. The effort to flood the market was "wildly successful. The United States is now awash in opiods," the suit said, citing data showing that more than 250 million prescriptions for the narcotic were filled in 2010. [Emphasis added]

The U.S. census reported the population in 2010 was 308,745,538.

Damien's note: I recognize the need for pain killers, having family members who live with chronic pain. At the same time, there is a family history of addiction to prescription drugs. My father as a child had heard his grandfather screaming from his bedroom where his adult children had locked him after he became addicted to morphine in the hospital. The experience made my father very cautious about pain killers all his life.

For what it is worth, I also realize that there are many ways in which we each become addicted to (or at least, dependent on) other ways of easing pain: sex, food, political activism, religion, shopping. Sometimes I think the biggest scourge is not the chemicals we put into our bodies, but the destructive thoughts we put into our minds. FOX News, anyone?