Capitol Hill Blue Forums Science and Technology Health, Medicine & the healing Sciences Drug deaths now outnumber traffic fatalities in U.

And,... this also doesn't take into account items fast tracked into the market by well connected political facilitators such as aspertame (Nutri-sweet/Searle Corp) pushed through the FDA by none other than good ol' Donald Rumsfield. Nevermind it's addictive and very bad for you...

Naloxone (its brand name is Narcan) and can be administered either nasally or by injection. It can rapidly reverse the potentially deadly effects of opioid drugs, which include heroin and prescription pain relievers like OxyContin and Vicodin. It does not produce a high — quite the opposite, in fact, because it blocks the effects of opioids.

Naloxone is much safer than some drugs currently available without a prescription. Both insulin and Tylenol (acetaminophen) can be deadly if misused, but it is impossible to overdose on Naloxone and it has few side effects.

Overdose deaths linked to prescription opioids more than tripled between 1999 and 2006. The majority of fatal overdoses involve either prescription opioids or heroin in combination with alcohol and/or another depressant drug, such as Valium or Xanax.

Some cases do occur when pain patients mistakenly take too much or drink alcohol with their medications, however, most seem to involve people with histories of addiction who get the drugs from non-medical sources. For example, a study of prescription-drug-related deaths in one heavily affected state found that fewer than half of overdose victims had been prescribed the drug(s) that killed them and that 95 percent showed signs of addiction, such as injecting drugs meant for oral use.