The national increase in the fatal heroin abuse has been well-reported over the past few years. The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services provides further information here: The Prescription Drug & Heroin Overdose Epidemic. Over the past five years, incident-based reports taken by the Police Department involving heroin are consistent with this national trend beginning in Q3 2014. The heroin involvement in this incident-based reports is inclusive of the manufacture, sale, use, and overdose of heroin. 

Even so, earlier in 2017 the University of Virginia published a study, Geographic Variation in Opioid and Heroin Involved Drug Poisoning Mortality Rates, illustrating that heroin-related fatalities remain under-reported due to discrepancies in death certificate reporting.