In an effort to curb America's deadly opioid crisis, federal health officials are urging doctors to largely avoid prescribing highly addictive painkillers like OxyContin and Vicodin when treating patients for chronic pain.

The new guidelines , issued Tuesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , are directed at primary care providers, who issue about half of all opioid prescriptions.

Since 1999, such prescriptions and sales have quadrupled in the United States, a boom that the CDC said has "helped create and fuel " the current epidemic of opioid abuse and overdose. In 2012 alone, doctors handed out 259 million opioid prescriptions -- one bottle for every adult in the United States.

"More than 40 Americans die each day from prescription opioid overdoses. We must act now," CDC Director Tom Frieden said in a statement on Tuesday. "Overprescribing opioids -- largely for chronic pain -- is a key driver of America's drug-overdose epidemic. The guideline will give physicians and patients the information they need to make more informed decisions about treatment."