American health officials are, with good reason, working to get the nation’s opioid addiction problems under control. That’s evident in the effort by Oregon Health Authority to come up with new ways to address chronic pain and by the federal Food and Drug Administration to create new prescribing guidelines for the powerful painkillers.

They’ve taken on a pair of difficult tasks both of controlling access to the drugs and ensuring that people with chronic pain problems get the relief they need.

The problem of opioid abuse is huge. Between 1999 and 2016, according to the Centers for Disease Control, about 350,000 Americans died of opioid abuse. Another 49,000 plus died in 2017.

Locally, 5.18 Deschutes County residents per 100,000 died of opioid overdoses between 2011 and 2015; in Crook County, that number was 8.66 per 100,000. No deaths were reported in Jefferson County.

For now, the state is considering moving several painful chronic conditions above its cutoff line for treatment of Oregon Health Plan (Medicaid) participants. If that happens, those suffering from such things as fibromyalgia and chronic pain syndrome would be eligible for treatments and therapies that would help them manage pain without the use of addictive drugs beginning in 2020. OHP members with back pain already are eligible.

At the same time the federal Food and Drug Administration is developing new opioid prescription guidelines that would allow variations depending upon the condition involved. That’s a change from the current one-size-fits-all guidelines. The aim, again, is to make sure that those who need drugs have them, while those who can do with less get less.

Both agencies are working to address a serious drug problem, and that’s good. Both also apparently recognize that a single limit may provide too much for some and too little for others. Balancing need for all may not be easy, nor accomplished quickly. They both must be willing to reconsider and fine-tune their rules as more information becomes available.