If you're thinking the drug in question is cocaine, you're dead wrong. The killer is in most every American home--and it's legal.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has just sounded the alarm that 46 people die every day throughout the U.S. from overdosing on prescription drugs.

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The CDC said prescriptions for opioid painkillers started to jump in the late 1990s. It reported that 259 million prescriptions were written for painkillers in the U.S. in 2012 alone. This massive quantity is enough to supply every American adult with a bottle of painkillers.

As a result, the country "is in the midst of a severe epidemic of opioid addiction and overdose deaths. According to the CDC, this is the worst drug epidemic in United States' history," claims Dr. Andrew Kolodny of the Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing.

Worse, this jump led to parallel increases in rates of addiction and overdose deaths. What this suggests is that U.S. health authorities might not be able to reverse this epidemic until doctors and dentists begin to prescribe opioid painkillers more cautiously.

Opioids are a type of narcotic pain medication prescribed by doctors to manage severe pain not controlled by over-the-counter pain relievers such as paracetamol. Opioids such as oxycodone and hydrocodone can have serious side effects if not used correctly, however.

With just five percent of the world's population, the U.S. currently uses up 99 percent of the world's supply of hydrocodone and 80 percent of the world's entire supply of oxycodone.

Hydrocodone is a semi-synthetic opioid derived from codeine, which is an opiate used for its analgesic, antihypertensive, antidepressant, and sedative properties, among other uses.

The popular brands Vicodin and Lortab contain hydrocodone, which is normally combined with a painkiller such as paracetamol. Hydrocodone is prescribed overwhelmingly within the U.S. and prescriptions in other countries are rare.

On the other hand, oxycodone is a semi-synthetic opioid synthesized from poppy. It's a narcotic analgesic generally used for the relief of moderate to severe pain. Popular oxycodone brands are Oxycontin and Roxicodone.

Opioids, however, are essential for end-of-life care or when used short term for acute pain. They've become popular in part because chronic pain afflicts over 100 million people in the United States. Dr. Bob Twillman of the American Academy of Pain Management believes the prevalence of chronic pain in the U.S. population is a pandemic.

Dr. Kolodny admits chronic pain is a serious problem but "unfortunately, we are harming far more people with chronic pain than we're helping when we treat them with long-term opioid medications".