the number of people who have actually died from ephedrine is quite small. the FDA receives about 20 reports of "adverse incidents" involving ephedrine each year (versus thousands for most illegal drugs or even medicinal drugs like acetaminophen), and according to one investigation these include things such as people who robbed convenience stores under the influence of ephedrine and people who died from environmental hyperthermia while on ephedrine. that is, they aren't simply eating 10 of them and automatically dying of heart attacks.
which is not to say it's totally safe; it's probably very dangerous to combine with other stimulants, including caffeine, and really shouldn't be taken in high doses or for extended periods of time.
the proper pronunciation is [@'fEdrIn] (ipa, where @=schwa, E=epsilon, I=small caps I; yeah, i'm taking linguistics. big ups me.) eh-FED-rin, not EF-ed-rin. although apparently both are ok. it comes from Ephedra sinica, an herb, which is used in Chinese medicine as an anti-asthmatic (ma huang, 'yellow astringent').
it has attracted some attention as a precursor for certain unmentionable things. but, see, one of the enantiomers is pseudoephedrine (I think it's an erythro/threo relationship, with the hydroxyl group being different), and pseudoephedrine is BIG as a cold medication. pseudoephedrine has significantly less cardiovascular effect than ephedrine. a large number of cold medications once formulated with phenylpropanolamine (PPA, which is also known as norephedrine) now contain pseudoephedrine, after PPA was recalled last year.
the big, important part
Ephedrine acts by causing neurons in the somatic epinephrine (adrenaline) system to release epinephrine; it is therefore a sympathomimetic. Ephedrine does not cross the blood-brain barrier and is not, strictly speaking, psychoactive.
