By John Ostapkovich

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - A Bucks County woman has helped turn her tragedy into something that may save other people the pain.

Marti Hottenstein lost her son Karl to a methadone/prescription drug interaction in 2006, but she’s turned her grief into action, in lobbying for the now-passed Karl’s Law. It requires methadone related deaths in Pennsylvania to be investigated, not necessarily because there might be some sinister finding.

“Say, if the statistics are high that someone’s dying because the doctors aren’t prescribing it right or because it’s not being utilized properly or people are poly-drugging on it, then you can target that area to correct it because methadone deaths has soared to an epidemic proportion.”

Hottenstein has thrown herself into this problem so much that she works at a methadone clinic (something that riles the anti-methadone crowd) but she says the drug is useful and even life-saving if prescribed, taken and monitored properly.

She says Karl’s Law is a step in that direction.