BOSTON (AP) — Gov. Deval Patrick defended the state’s first-in-the-nation ban of the powerful new painkiller Zohydro after a federal judge suggested in court that his administration may have overreached.

“I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t think I had a legal footing to do it,” Patrick said at an unrelated event at the Statehouse. “More to the point, I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t think we had a real emergency, and we have a real emergency.”