BOSTON -- Lawmakers seeking to end OxyContin thefts at drugstores may find themselves at odds with state health officials who want poor and disabled people suffering chronic pain to be able to obtain the drug.

The Legislature's Public Safety Committee planned a hearing for today to consider reclassifying the powerful painkiller to make it less accessible.

Lawmakers worry OxyContin abuse may cause public health problems beyond the danger to pharmacists and their employees who are held up at gunpoint for the drug.

"It's not just about armed robbery, it's about potentially overprescribing, fraudulent prescriptions, doctor shopping," said state Sen. James Jajuga, D-Methuen and chairman of the Public Safety Committee. "We've got a problem, a serious problem."

But a state health official says there isn't any evidence that OxyContin is being abused.

"The issue is not the abuse of the drug, the issue is that pharmacies are being held up and robbed of this medicine," said Richard McGreal, spokesman for the state Division of Medical Assistance, which administers Medicaid, or MassHealth. "The two problems do not relate."

Five other states have sought to curb abuse of the drug by requiring prior approval from Medicaid to obtain prescriptions for it.

Last week, a DMA consultant said the division is weighing a plan to require prior approval from Medicaid to obtain prescriptions for it. McGreal said yesterday that the agency has not finalized any plans to do so.

If taken properly, the synthetic morphine is released slowly into the body, but abusers crush the pills and inhale or inject the powder to get the same kind of euphoric high that heroin brings.

OxyContin has been linked to at least 120 overdose deaths nationwide. In Philadelphia, oxycodone, the drug's primary ingredient, was detected in 39 bodies and was the cause of death in 11 of those victims during the first six months of this year.

The recent rash of robberies in Massachusetts has law enforcement officials concerned that OxyContin abuse is moving into the urban Northeast after exploding in rural Maine and Appalachia.

On Monday, a robber who indicated he was carrying a weapon held up Sedell's Pharmacy on North Main Street in Raynham, taking a supply of the painkiller. The same day, two masked men armed with handguns forced a Medford pharmacist to turn over OxyContin and other drugs, police said. An unarmed robber stole OxyContin from a Falmouth CVS on the same day, police said.

Jajuga said he's concerned about the widespread use of the drug. Last year, Medicaid reimbursed patients for $11.2 million worth of OxyContin. That's about 4 million dosage units, Jajuga said.

"That means this is spread out throughout the Commonwealth of Massachusetts," Jajuga said. He's concerned OxyContin abuse could lead to heroin addiction.

For many people in the end stages of cancer, though, OxyContin is a breakthrough that helps them with intense pain, McGreal said.

"Nobody is saying that the people who are doing the holdups are on MassHealth," McGreal said.