Trying to stem the scourge of prescription drug abuse, an advisory panel of experts to the Food and Drug Administration voted on Friday to toughen the restrictions on painkillers like Vicodin that contain hydrocodone, the most widely prescribed drugs in the country.

The recommendation, which the drug agency is likely to follow, would limit access to the drugs by making them harder to prescribe, a major policy change that advocates said could help ease the growing problem of addiction to painkillers, which exploded in the late 1990s and continues to strike hard in communities from Appalachia and the Midwest to New England.

But at 19 to 10, the vote was far from unanimous, with some opponents expressing skepticism that the change would do much to combat abuse. Oxycodone, another highly abused painkiller and the main ingredient in OxyContin, has been in the more restrictive category since it first came on the market, they pointed out in testimony at a public hearing. They also said the change could create unfair obstacles for patients in chronic pain.

Painkillers now take the lives of more Americans than heroin and cocaine combined, and since 2008, drug-induced deaths have outstripped those from traffic accidents. Prescription drugs account for about three-quarters of all drug overdose deaths in the United States, with the number of deaths from painkillers quadrupling since 1999, according to federal data.