According to the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institute on Drug Abuse, opioids were involved in nearly 70% of drug-related overdose deaths in the U.S. in 2018. While deaths involving heroin fell between 2017 and 2018, deaths involving synthetic opioids (including fentanyl) continued to rise, and were involved in more than two-thirds of all opioid-related deaths.
From 2010 to 2018, overdoses involving heroin without any other synthetic opioids rose by a factor of two. In the same time period, overdoses involving heroin and other synthetic opioids rose by a factor of over 200, representing 60% of all heroin-related overdoses by 2018.