The Drug Enforcement Administration has published new rules tightening restrictions on Vicodin due to widespread prescription abuse.

The new rules, published Friday, will only allow one 90-day prescription and a patient would have to see their doctor to get a refill.

In addition doctors will not be able to phone in a prescription to a pharmacy, and in some states only doctors, not nurses or physician assistants, will be able to write a prescription, Al Jazeera reports.

Like Us on Facebook

Pharmacies will have to keep Vicodin in special vaulted areas.

The new rules by the DEA will technically reclassify Vicodin from a Schedule-III to a Schedule-II drug. Examples of other Schedule-II drugs are cocaine, methamphetamine, codeine, and oxycodone.

DEA administrator Michele Leonhart said in a statement that Vicodin, along with other prescription drugs, are over-abused and more deaths are caused by prescription drug overdoses than car accidents.

"Today's action recognizes that these products are some of the most addictive and potentially dangerous prescription medications available," Leonhart said.

According to the CDC over 15,000 people overdosed on prescription drugs in 2009, which is more than heroin and cocaine combined.

The American Academy of Pain Medicine voiced concerns about tighter regulations in a statement, saying that stricter protocols will not solve the "complicated" drug abuse problem and may hamper people who need Vicodin from getting the drug.

"My concern is that abandoning the needs of people who suffer significant chronic pain - those people whose nervous systems are damaged - is cruel and unsupported," said Academy President-Elect Lynn R. Webster, M.D.

Dr. Andrew Kolodny, president of Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing, begs to differ, saying that if you speak with painkiller addicts, "nine times out of 10" they began by using Vicodin.

Until 2013, the Food and Drug Administration rejected multiple bids from the DEA to reclassify Vicodin as a schedule-II drug.

TagsDrugs, war on drugs, vicodin