New Jersey Attorney General Gurbil Grewal on Thursday announced an expansion of the state's efforts to combat the ongoing opioid addiction crisis.

The primary move is creation of the Office of the New Jersey Coordinator of Addiction Response and Enforcement Strategies within the Department of Law and Public Safety. The office will coordinate the state's drug treatment efforts with those of other involved agencies and groups.

The office will be headed by Sharon Joyce, currently the acting director of the Division of Consumer Affairs and a deputy director of the Division of Law. She has been with the department for 38 years.

Grewal made the announcement at a multistate opioid addiction symposium at Seton Hall University School of Law in Newark.

“The opioid crisis is unprecedented in its scope and devastating in its intensity, and our response must be equally broad in its scope and intensity,” Grewal said during a speech to the attendees.

The state, he said, must “unleash a full attack on this deadly epidemic.”

The programs announced Thursday expand on efforts begun by former Gov. Chris Christie, who made drug treatment a centerpiece of his second term.

Four major initiatives will be overseen by Joyce's office, according to a release. They are:

• The Statewide Opioid Response Teams (ORT): A round-the-clock program in which participating police, emergency medical technicians, volunteers and local treatment agencies provide crisis intervention. Participants are to be trained in de-escalation techniques, evidence preservation and how to interact with opioid-addicted individuals. The program will be paid for by an $850,000 federal grant.

• The NJ CARES Website: It will be expanded to provide real-time information about the status of the state's opioid crisis and a breakdown of how each county is being affected, including weekly updates on suspected fatal drug overdoses and usage of the overdose antidote “naloxone,” and quarterly reports on the number of opioid prescriptions being written.

• The Interagency Drug Awareness Dashboard (IDAD): A program for sharing opioid-related data between state agencies, including data from the New Jersey Prescription Monitoring Program (NJ PMP); law enforcement data on heroin, fentanyl and other opioid-related arrests; naloxone administrations; fatal and nonfatal drug overdoses; and treatment information. The department will integrate the State Police's Drug Monitoring Initiative with information from NJ PMP into one centralized “dashboard” to create a clearer picture of the opioid epidemic ranging from street drug activities to prescribing abuse. The pilot program will be funded in part by a $600,000 federal grant

• Enhancements to the NJ PMP: A series of upgrades using an electronic database to track information on prescription sales of narcotic painkillers and other addictive drugs. Proposed enhancements include adding the anti-convulsant medication gabapentin, a drug known to enhance the effects of opioids, to the list of drugs tracked by the NJ PMP; expanding access to the NJ PMP database to certain mental health providers; and the hiring of a medical consultant to review data for potential abuses or prescribing problems.

Grewal said the department also will continue with regulatory moves, criminal prosecutions and civil litigation targeting opioid manufacturers and prescribers.

The department first moved to monitor gabapentin prescriptions last month. At that time, a department statement said a 2016 study by the American Association for Clinical Chemistry estimated that one in five users of gabapentin abuse the medication. Grewal and Joyce said there were 57 million prescriptions written for gabapentin in the U.S. in 2015, a 42 percent increase from 2011. Seven other states, they said last month, currently require reporting of gabapentin prescriptions.

Grewal's efforts under current Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, are a continuation of similar efforts undertaken during the administration of Christie, a Republican.

A year ago, Christie signed legislation limiting opioid prescriptions to a five-day supply. Most recently, Christie was the chairman of the President's Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis.

In November, the department sued the founder of a pharmaceutical company that makes and sells fentanyl-based opioids as an individual defendant, alleging that he and his former company, Insys Therapeutics Inc., engaged in an illegal campaign to push sales of its drug, Subsys. The announcement came a day after the Insys founder, John Kapoor, pleaded not guilty in a federal court in Boston to charges that he led a conspiracy involving doctors to overprescribe the painkiller.

Local governments have taken action, too. Last December, the cities of Irvington and Ridgefield joined Newark and Paterson in bringing suits against drug companies over their alleged roles in the opioid addiction crisis.