Maine Gov. Paul LePage is being accused of implying drug addicts' lives aren't worth saving after vetoing legislation that would make medication to fight an opioid overdose available over the counter.

In his veto message to legislators, the Republican governor wrote, "Naloxone does not truly save lives; it merely extends them until the next overdose."

The medicine does save lives, however: It can be injected or used nasally and has been credited with reversing more than 10,000 overdoses since 1996.

LePage's Wednesday letter struck critics as either callous or careless, and state politicians who disagree with his position hope to override the veto.

"In essence, Gov. LePage is saying that saving lives perpetuates addiction and that it is better to let people die," Bill Piper, senior director of national affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance, said in a statement Thursday.

In Maine, legislators for years have pushed to expand legal access to naloxone – also called by the brand name Narcan – with mixed success.

LePage's position softened somewhat in 2014, when he let a bill allowing prescriptions for family members of addicts become law without his signature. Last year, another bill allowing prescriptions for addicts' friends became law after LePage missed a veto deadline for a pile of bills he opposed.

Maine Rep. Henry Beck, a Democrat who sponsored last year’s bill, says the governor’s letter exhibited “strange thinking and potentially harmful language.”

Beck says he believes LePage’s letter “would be particularly hurtful to any Maine person whose loved one has been lost from an overdose or whose life has been saved by Narcan. It’s just not constructive language when we’re so deep in this drug crisis.”

According to the Maine attorney general’s office, 272 people died in the state in 2015 from drug overdose, 31 percent more than in 2014.

But Beck says he’s more focused on helping override the veto than criticizing LePage, who also said the bill from Democratic state Rep. Sara Gideon would create "a sense of normalcy and security around heroin use."

The lower house of Maine's legislature voted 98-49 in favor of expanding naloxone access in March, and officially passed the idea vetoed by LePage without objection. A similar bill passed the state Senate 25-8, and veto overrides require a two-thirds vote in each chamber, suggesting all eyes will be on the lower house.

"This is the first time he's successfully vetoed a Narcan bill, so it will be a real test for the state legislature," Beck says.

State Rep. Richard Malaby, a Republican who supports making naloxone available over the counter, says he understands the governor's position that the non-intoxicating drug offers a safety net to people with no immediate plans to stop using heroin.

"I'm hopeful that's not the case for many people, that it saves lives and then they move onto recovery," Malaby says. "I'm an optimist, maybe a pro-life person, and I'm going to vote for the bill."

Though the veto letter kicked up outrage, LePage spokesman Peter Steele says the governor is being misunderstood.

"Nowhere in the veto message does it imply lives are not worth saving," Steele says. "No one in Augusta is working harder than Gov. LePage to save lives."

Steele says LePage recently proposed and then signed into law a bill adding 200 jail beds for addiction treatment, fought to increase the number of Maine Drug Enforcement Agency officers and earlier this week signed a bill limiting legal opioid prescriptions and requiring doctors to submit to a tracking system.

"Until the governor started speaking loudly and publicly about the drug crisis in Maine, which claims over 250 lives a year and results in almost 1,000 babies a year being born addicted to or affected by drugs, the legislature was totally ignoring the problem," Steele says.

Efforts similiar to the one vetoed by LePage have been popping up elsewhere as opioid addiction has become more widely discussed.

Late last year, CVS Pharamacy said it offered naloxone over the counter in 14 states, up from two. National pharmacy-chain rival Walgreens said in February it intended to make the drug available without a prescription at locations in 35 states, and included Maine on the list.

Blunt and allegedly offensive commentary from LePage about drugs is nothing new.

In January , he said drug dealers "with the name D-Money, Smoothie, Shifty" visit Maine and "half the time ... impregnate a young white girl before they leave." Later that month, he suggested gun-owning Mainers "load up and get rid of the drug dealers," before backtracking.

Malaby says the governor may sometimes misspeak, but he suspects he often purposely uses hyperbolic language to make people consider unappreciated truths.