The number of overdose deaths involving heroin has been dropping, even as overdose deaths over all have kept climbing because of fentanyl. In Maryland, deaths involving heroin fell by 38 percent from 2016 through 2018, according to preliminary data. In Massachusetts, heroin or likely heroin was present in 71 percent of opioid-related deaths in 2014; in the third quarter of 2018, it was present in only 34 percent. Only four of the 397 opioid deaths in New Hampshire last year involved heroin, according to preliminary data; 363 involved fentanyl . Here in Baltimore, Todd C. Edwards, a spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Administration’s local district office, said law enforcement was now seizing more fentanyl than heroin.

Source: New York Times May 18, 2019 09:00 UTC