More Americans are getting addicted to prescription painkillers than illicit drugs, according to experts at a San Diego drug symposium who compared prescription drug abuse to heroin addiction.

The San Diego Union-Tribune reported April 11 that speakers at the conference, sponsored by treatment provider CRC Health Group, Inc., noted that users of drugs like Oxycontin behave very much like users of other drugs, from the crimes they commit to the problems that surface in their personal lives.

"The abuse of these drugs touches the lives of people beyond the abusers," said Phillip Herschman, president of CRC's Opiate Treatment Program. "It affects their families. It affects the people they come in contact with."

About 1.4 million Americans are addicted to prescription painkillers, while an estimated 980,000 use heroin. Treatment admissions at CRC for prescription-drug problems have risen from 5 percent to 25 percent of all cases in just 5 years.

Former drug czar Gen. Barry McCaffrey sought to draw a distinction between people who seek out prescription drugs to get high and those who have legitimate prescriptions but inadvertently get addicted to powerful painkillers. "The fact that these are legal narcotics and can provide great relief to chronic pain sufferers under the care of a doctor is a good thing," he said. "The fact that these drugs are being used by people as a means of getting high is a bad thing."