Drug

An estimated 70,000 people have been killed in Mexico's brutal drug-cartel wars over the past six years. Those costs are horrific enough. But there are also collateral damages, including a precipitous drop-off in tourism that has dented Mexico's otherwise robust economy; a chilling effect on the Mexican media, which faces constant threats, kidnappings and worse from the warring cartels; and frequent indifference or ineptitude from the country's legal...

An Orange County doctor featured in a Times investigative report because 16 of his patients fatally overdosed on drugs he prescribed has had another patient death, according to recently released coroner's records. Wayne Oviatt, a patient of Dr. Van Vu of Huntington Beach, fatally overdosed in January. The onetime Mammoth "ski bum," as his brother called him, suffered from chronic pain. He was known to abuse his medications and mix them with alcohol, and obtained drugs from various doctors, coroner's records state.

It's not enough that medical insurance companies want to dictate how much and what kind of treatment our illnesses deserve. Now legislators and law enforcement agencies are butting in, trying to curtail the use of high-powered painkillers because too many people are dying from abuse of prescription drugs. A physicians group is asking the Food and Drug Administration for stricter guidelines on how the drugs are used, an FDA advisory panel has recommended limiting patients to fewer pills and making prescriptions harder to refill, and Congress is considering a bill that would bump hydrocodone-based pills - Vicodin, Norco and Lortab - into the same controlled-substance class as opium.

The Food and Drug Administration on Monday approved a drug to treat the severe nausea and vomiting that some women experience during early pregnancy. The Canadian-made medication will be marketed as Diclegis. It is the only prescription medication approved for pregnant women experiencing "morning sickness" that does not go away with a bland diet of small meals that are low in fat. Diclegis was once known and marketed in the United States as Bendectin and taken by as many as one in 10 pregnant women.

Two Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies have been criminally charged with lying about a drug arrest after a videotape of the incident appeared to contradict their account, authorities said. Deputies Robert G. Lindsey, 31, and Charles G. Rodriguez, 38, were each charged with one count of filing a false report and one count of conspiracy in connection with the June 3, 2011, drug arrest. The deputies, who were arrested and released on their own recognizance, are expected to be arraigned May 13. If convicted, they face a maximum of three years in prison.

Among the household items put to unintended use in the new film "Evil Dead," a playfully reverent if not-overly-so remake of Sam Raimi's 1981 cult favorite horror movie, are a nail gun, an electric knife, a jerry-rigged defibrillator, and, in an obvious nod to the original, a chain saw. The feature debut of Uruguayan director Fede Alvarez, discovered via a short on YouTube, "Evil Dead" has a gleeful exuberance of its own analogous to the mad invention...

Prescription sleep medications can be balm for the insomniac, but for many who take medications marketed as Ambien, Restoril and Lunesta, they can come with a cost: fogginess that can last into the next day. An experimental medication may help induce sleep without the hangover of impaired attention, memory and learning that is common with so-called hypnotic sedatives now available to consumers. The investigational drug works on receptors in a region of the brain that's key for allowing us to fall into slumber: the lateral hypothalamus, where molecules called orexins are released throughout the day to keep us alert and awake.