ORANGE — Orange could soon become the second Franklin County municipality to sue major pharmaceutical companies over the opioid crisis.

Orange’s Selectboard discussed joining Greenfield and 89 other Massachusetts towns in an effort to win monetary compensation from McKesson Corporation, Cardinal Health and AmerisourceBergen, all multi-billion dollar drug distribution companies, and about 20 others.

The lawsuits are being litigated by Massachusetts Opioid Litigation Attorneys (MOLA), a national consortium of law firms including Sweeney Merrigan Law, LLP.

MOLA delivered a five-page agreement that the Selectboard must sign to sue the pharmaceutical companies Wednesday, and the Selectboard decided to turn it over to town counsel for approval. If there are no legal issues with the agreement, Orange will sign on.

“It’s a fairly broad initiative across the state and across the country to sue the manufacturers for exacerbating the epidemic by making those pharmaceuticals more available than they should be in a lot of places,” Selectboard Vice Chairwoman Jane Peirce said.

Peirce said the lawsuit is no cost to the town, that the town would become “a party to” the MOLA lawsuits, and that if any monetary damages are awarded, 25 percent of that goes to the attorneys representing the town.

“If no award is ever granted, we owe nothing. The attorneys front the money,” Peirce said.

Attorney Thomas Merrigan of Sweeney Merrigan Law was a judge for more than a decade at Orange District Court, and previously had told the Selectboard that the drug companies are partially to blame for the rise in opioid abuse in Massachusetts. He said Orange, which has seen its fair share of opioid abuse, should join the suit.

“(We need) to hold them accountable for the epidemic they’ve created and caused in our communities,” Merrigan said at the earlier meeting.

The lawyers have not determined dollar amounts they are seeking, but are looking for compensation for monetary damages incurred by the towns affected by the crisis. This includes the costs of law enforcement, emergency medical services, needle exchanges and administering Narcan, an opioid antagonist.

“The suit is on behalf of the municipality for its past cost as well as its future cost for dealing with the epidemic,” Merrigan said. “As a result, each municipality is its own plaintiff. It is not a class-action lawsuit.”

Merrigan cited a lawsuit by the state against major tobacco companies in the 1990s, which resulted in billions of dollars in settlements, as similar to the MOLA cases.

He said the lawsuits target big companies like McKesson Corporation, Cardinal Health and AmerisourceBergen, which “aren’t Fortune 500 companies, these are Fortune 15 companies.”

“In 1970, Congress passed the Controlled Substances Act, which was basically a deal with the manufacturers that in exchange for the opportunity to transact in this dangerous product, opioids, they imposed on them by statute an affirmative obligation that they need to identify and report suspicious or aberrant patterns of distribution, consumption and activity,” Merrigan said in meeting with Selectboard last month.

Merrigan said the drug companies have “looked the other way” in this regard, and manufacturers have focused on marketing and distributing opioids in municipalities that have developed drug problems.

He said the companies have legally become a “nuisance,” and are liable for municipal costs, especially law enforcement costs, related to the epidemic. The effects of the crisis, Merrigan said, are far-reaching.

“Schools are also finding out that there are a fair amount of special education concerns because of children who were born from mothers who were addicted while they were pregnant,” Merrigan said. “There are issues with children born in opiate-abusing homes.”

Orange, if it chooses to sue, will need to identify times it has paid to quell this legal nuisance, and the MOLA attorneys will file the lawsuit in a “local, federal court,” Merrigan said.

Greenfield became the first municipality in the state to sue the pharmaceutical companies with MOLA in December, with Mayor William Martin expressing hope that the lawsuit would bring awareness to the epidemic in Massachusetts.

Defendants named in that suit include Teva Pharmaceuticals, Johnson & Johnson, Janssen Pharmaceuticals and Purdue Pharma.

Purdue Pharma previously responded to the Greenfield lawsuit with a statement: “We are deeply troubled by the prescription and illicit opioid abuse crisis, and are dedicated to being part of the solution. … We vigorously deny these allegations and look forward to the opportunity to present our defense.”