Doctors told to avoid prescribing opiates for chronic pain

USA Today: The nation's top federal health agency urged doctors to avoid prescribing powerful opiate painkillers for patients with chronic pain, saying the risks from such drugs far outweigh the benefits for most people.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in its first ever guidelines for dispensing the morphine-like, addictive drugs, such as Vicodin and OxyContin, said it took the action Tuesday to combat the nation's deadly prescription painkiller epidemic.

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