Even as drug makers tout their abuse deterrent opiates, the addiction problem is still running rampant in this country and many are worried that there is no close end in sight.

This article from the New York Times wonders if the safeguards drug manufacturers have put into pain medications are actually causing other serious problems and might not be as safe as we need them to be.

To try and deter abuse, drug manufacturers started giving pills protective coatings making them hard to chew or turn into liquid- both delivery methods to make the high stronger for the user. But just because it makes it harder doesn’t mean motivated users won’t find a way around the safeguards. Or they’ll move on to street drugs like heroin that can give them similar highs as pain medication. The article points to a recent H.I.V. outbreak in Indiana that was caused from Opana users sharing needles to inject the pain drug.

Experts think that these safeguards might give doctors and patients a false sense of security, thinking that if the medications are abuse-deterrent then they can use them more freely without worrying about the risks of addiction.

Of the 219 million prescriptions for painkillers written in 2014, just 1.4 percent were written for the abuse-deterrent kind of those opiates. There were three new abuse-deterrent painkillers approved last year and more are in the works but the FDA continues to allow the release of new painkillers that do not have these mechanisms.

Scarier still, a study out of the American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse finds that though injection or snorting might have higher risks of overdose, most abusers still prefer to simply swallow their pills which is by no means an abuse-proof practice. No tampering necessary.

The chief medical officer from one drug manufacturer defended the need for their abuse-deterrent drug, saying that “focusing solely on what they don’t do is like saying seatbelts aren’t important because they don’t prevent all traffic fatalities”, and even with more attention to abuse-deterrent properties there are still going to be ways to tamper with painkillers.

While abuse-deterrent medications are definitely a step in the right direction it seems like we still have a long way to go in the fight against addiction to these medications.