It looks like a lollipop, but it's actually a potent painkiller designed to help seriously ill cancer patients. The only problem, other people are abusing it… and with deadly consequences.

When you think of a lollipop you probably think of a fun, sweet treat. But Ted Banasiewicz thinks of relief for excruciating pain caused by multiple cancer tumors.

"Right now, I carry it with me wherever I go," said Ted.

Ted has battled cancer for nine years and never leaves the house without his own kind of lollipop. It's a prescription painkiller version called Actiq. The berry-flavored lozenge is Fentanyl on a stick. It's 100-times more powerful than morphine, is absorbed through the cheek and relieves pain in minutes.

"It has kept me out of the emergency room," he said.

"To cancer patients, when you have pain that goes zero to 60, boom, like that, it's a huge important difference," said Dr. Andrew Putnam, an oncologist.

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Lollipop Painkiller

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But abuse of it is on the rise. Actiq, which abusers call perc-o-pops, is in the same drug classification as opium and morphine. That means it has the highest potential for addiction, abuse and fatal overdose.

"The problem is if used inappropriately, if given huge doses when they don't need it, sure, any of them can kill someone," said Dr. Putnam.

In fact, the lollipop painkiller has been associated with 47 deaths linked to overdose or other misuse and two children died after confusing it with candy. Reports indicate more than 80-percent of patients have Actiq prescribed for problems like headaches and back pain. Cancer doctors accounted for only one-percent of the prescriptions filled at retail pharmacies in the first half of last year.