Health authorities across the United States on March 10, issued some guidelines governing the prescription and distribution of pain killers across the country. This endeavor is an effort to tackle the increasing number of overdose incidents in the US, which accounts for about 40 deaths among Americans every day.

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The recommendation states that doctors should be more careful and cautious in the prescription of opioids so that incidents of addiction may be reduced. Concerns about drug abuse related to the use of opioids have grown increasingly over the past years.

A record 26,647 deaths related to overdose in 2014 indicates a 14 percent increase from the previous year. The number also represents 61 percent of the deaths related to drug overdose.

After state-based institutions and medical organizations began implementing their own restrictions on pain killer prescription, the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) had been under great pressure to develop a nation-wide standard to address the issue. Officials have assured the public that the newly implemented guidelines urges doctors to be more thorough in assessing patients who will or will not really need the powerful medicines.

CDC Director Tom Frieden told reporters that opioids have proven to bring more risks than benefits for people who take them. He further adds that there are a lot more other ways to treat chronic pain other than pain killers. He urged the public to start acting now to combat the daily death rate in America.

The guidelines will primarily target general practitioners who do not specialize in the use and intake of opioids. Currently,medics prescribe the said painkillers to patients in a two or four-week period. Following the recommendations, doctors will now have to let patients take urine tests first, enroll them to a drug monitoring system program, then continue with the prescription if it is proven they are not be seeing other doctors for the same medicines.

The CDC guidelines requires 16 states to implement them. Currently, 49 states already practice them. The regulations do not cover terminal and serious illnesses like cancer. 

TagsCenters for Disease Control and Prevention, Cancer, painkillers, US painkiller regulation, painkiller regulation, Tom Frieden, US CDC