According to new federal guidelines, prescription painkillers must not be the first choice to treat normal ailments, such as back pain and arthritis. The guidelines have been planned to change how doctors prescribe drugs such as OxyContin and Vicodin and to reduce their usage.

Due to rise in number of cases of addiction and abuse linked to these strong opioids drugs, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has asked primary care doctors to prefer and go for physical therapy, exercise and over-the-counter pain medications prior to selecting painkillers for chronic pain.

Medications such as morphine and oxycodone and also illegal narcotics like heroin, come among Opioid drugs.

The latest recommendations, which doctors don’t have to follow, represent an initiative to reverse roughly 20 years of increasing use of painkiller, which is also blamed by public health officials for over four-fold rise in overdose deaths associated with the drugs.

The US doctors wrote roughly 200 million prescriptions for opioid painkillers in 2014, while the toll of deaths tied to the drugs went up to nearly 19,000, which is the highest number on record.

In an interview with the Associated Press, Dr. Tom Frieden, the CDC's director, said that they have been trying to come up with a safer and more efficient course to deal with the chronic pain. Dr. Frieden added that the risks of addiction and death have been very well documented for such medications.

Over 40 people in the United States die every day because of painkiller overdoses, which is a shocking rate, termed as ‘doctor driven’ by Dr. Frieden.

As part of the fresh guidelines, doctors will prescribe painkillers only after they have considered non-addictive pain relievers, changes in behavior and other substitutes. The CDC has also asked doctors to advise the lowest effective dose possible. It also wants doctors to continue prescribing the drugs on in case they notice significant improvement among patients.