The U.S Food and Drug Administration has approved a stronger version of the hydrocodone drug, one of the most commonly abused prescription drugs. The announcement sparked negative reactions from patient safety advocates.

Hydrocodone is used to ease moderate to severe pain. It is the most prescribed drug in the U.S, with over 131 million prescriptions signed by American doctors in 2011.

The FDA announced its approval allowing Zogenix to sell a pure hydrocodone pain-killer in the US. The specific brand Zohydro ER will only be prescribed to patients required to take pain killers regularly, daily, and for a long time.

This is the first time that hydrocodone will be released as a single component pill, stronger than the usual prescriptive pain-killer drug. At present, hydrocodone and vicodin are combined to treat pain caused by surgery, injuries, migraine and arthritis.

The FDA decision comes with a recommendation for hydrocodone drugs to be moved from schedule III to schedule II medication class. This would mean that the pain killers combined with hydrocodone will only be available through a doctor's prescription without any refills. At present, these combination drugs while in schedule III can be prescribed by a nurse or health practitioner and may be refilled by the patient five times.

Meanwhile, this decision was strongly criticized by health experts and advocates for patient safety. They had pushed the agency to reject it. Furthermore, it was a shock for them since the agency's advisers previously voted 11-2 in favor of restricting the drug, according to ABC News.

Further, the packaging of the new drug seems to be not resistant to tampering and abuse. Mass. representative. Bill Keating said, "FDA not only approves this dangerous drug, but does so without requiring any abuse-deterrent features. This is outrageous. Abuse-deterrent technologies should not be the anomaly, they must be the norm."