Fentanyl Traced To More NYC Overdose Deaths Than Any Other Drug

NEW YORK — The share of New Yorkers killed by a powerful, deadly opioid spiked last year even as the pace of the city's drug epidemic slowed, new city figures show.

Fentanyl — a synthetic drug up to 100 times stronger than morphine — was the most common substance involved in overdose deaths for the first time last year, according to a Department of Health report released Monday. It was found in 57 percent of the city's 1,487 fatal overdoses in 2017, up from 44 percent in 2016, figures show.

Typically used as a painkiller, fentanyl has been found in batches of heroin but is increasingly mixed with non-opioid drugs, especially cocaine, the report says. Heroin, fentanyl or both were involved in 73 percent of all overdose deaths last year, the Health Department said.

Street-level dealers may not know the drugs they're selling contain fentanyl, and most people buying heroin aren't seeking out the more powerful opioid, according to the report.

"Thus, individuals who are not aware that they are using fentanyl are at increased risk of overdose," the report reads.

The spike in fentanyl-related deaths came as the number of fatal overdoses citywide rose 2 percent in 2017 from the prior year — a much slower increase than 2016's 51 percent spike, health officials said.

Some 360 overdose deaths occurred in the first three months of this year, three fewer than at the same point in 2017, the Health Department said.

Black New Yorkers saw the city's highest overdose death rate last year for the first time in 11 years, the report shows. It was 25.5 per 100,000 people, compared with 24.9 for whites and 23.9 for Latinos.

"New York City’s drug overdose epidemic continues, but the story of who is affected is changing," Dr. Oxiris Barbot, the acting health commissioner, said in a statement.

The Bronx was the epicenter of last year's fatal overdoses. Two neighborhoods there — Highbridge-Morrisania and Hunts Point-Mott Haven — had overdose death rates more than twice the citywide average of 21.2 per 100,000 people, the Health Department report says.

The rate exceeded that threshold in a total of 14 neighborhoods across the five boroughs, the report shows.

The city plans to distribute at least 15,000 kits with the overdose antidote naloxone in The Bronx as part of HealingNYC, an initiative to stem the citywide opioid epidemic, the Health Department said.

(Lead image: Bags of heroin, some laced with fentanyl, appear at a press conference held by the New York attorney general in 2016. Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)