ven as the world is struggling to come to terms with the reality that uncrowned King of Pop Michael Jackson is no more, his family and friends, suspecting foul play, have demanded an investigation into his death.

While US celebrity magazine Life & Style said a source told them that the eccentric artist had been popping pills, including anti-anxiety or sedative drugs Xanax and Zoloft and painkiller Demerol, for weeks before his death and that an overdose of the deadly cocktail could have caused respiratory and cardiac arrest, TMZ, the US celebrity website that has developed a reputation for showbusiness scoops, said a family source told them that Jackson receives a daily injection of Demerol and on Thursday he received a shot at 11:30 AM, shortly before he complained of breathlessness and collapsed into a coma, probably a result of massive cardiac arrest.

“Family members were concerned that Jackson was taking too much morphine and are saying that’s what caused his death,” TMZ reported.

The London Sun also said that Jackson, who had influenced a generation of singers and songwriters, had died of an overdose of Demerol. “Shortly after taking…Demerol, he started to experience slow, shallow breathing. His breathing gradually got slower and slower until it stopped…His staff started mouth-to-mouth, and an ambulance was called, which got there in eight minutes,” the London Sun quoted an unnamed source as saying.

Brian Oxman, a family attorney, also said Jackson was dependent on prescription drugs and he was almost certain that a strong overdose of painkiller had taken his life.

On Thursday noon, Jackson collapsed and entered into deep coma and when his personal physician failed to revive him, paramedics were called to his Bel-Air mansion in the posh Holmby Hill to resuscitate him.

But when they failed in their effort, Jackson was rushed to Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center where the doctors struggled for over an hour to revive him but they too failed to revive him and he was pronounced dead at 2:26 pm.

Jackson, Oxman said, was addicted to painkillers from the pain he developed after he accidentally burned his face during a Pepsi commercial shoot in 1984.

“This (death) is not something that has been unexpected… because of the medications which Michael was under,” Oxman said, adding that the singer was especially addicted to Demerol, a powerful morphine-based painkiller, whose injection is known to have dangerous side effects including cardiac arrest if used wrongly.