The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is working on prescription guidelines for primary-care physicians who prescribe opioids. These drugs bring relief to a lot of people but they are highly addictive and dangerous to those who could potentially abuse them. A lot of injured workers who are dealing with severe and painful injuries get prescriptions while they recover but unfortunately too many injured workers and other patients end up abusing these kinds of drugs.

In the last 15 years opioid sales have increased three-fold and in 2013 there were 16,000 overdose deaths from these kinds of drugs. The CDC’s guidelines will be the first federal guidelines of their kind to address opiates. What the guidelines hope to accomplish is a more open channel of communication between physicians and patients, so that patients and doctors alike know the risks and can instead opt for a different treatment that will still help treat symptoms. The guidelines call for urine drug tests for patients who are just starting these drugs and those who are on these kinds of medications long-term. They also recommend that providers look at data from a Prescription Drug Monitoring Program before prescribing opioids to a given patient. The guidelines are also going to limit the initial prescriptions of these kinds of drugs to a low-dose, three-day supply for new patients before moving on to stronger doses. Rightfully so, the guidelines seem to be encouraging doctors and their patients to be very careful with these kinds of drugs.

Some, like the 2,000 pain patients who were surveyed by the Pain News Network, are worried about the suggestions coming from the CDC. The American Cancer Society wrote the center a letter in which they said they were worried that cancer patients may be denied these pain relieving drugs but the CDC says they are focusing on primary-care physicians and not oncology departments. Others worry that patients will instead turn to street drugs like heroin, which have similar effects, and the use of illegal drugs will increase as a result of these guidelines. There are a lot of people who use these drugs in an appropriate way and do not end up abusing them, and they are worried that new guidelines will cause them to lose access to pain relieving drugs.

The guidelines are still a work in progress but CDC spokesperson Courtney Leland says the center does not want physicians to use the guidelines until they are finalized and released by the CDC, which they hope to do by early 2016.

“Prescription drug abuse and overdose is a serious public health issue and improving the way opioids are prescribed through clinical practice guidelines can ensure patients have access to safer, more effective chronic pain treatment while reducing the number of people who misuse, abuse, or overdose,” said Leland.