The rate of opioid overdoses has skyrocketed in Pennsylvania. According to a DEA report, 3,383 Pennsylvanians died of drug overdoses - more than half involving heroin.

In recent years, heroin has seen a resurgence in use among addicts. Experts attribute this to the explosion of prescribed opioid painkillers. Medical trending in the late 90's and early 2000's led doctors to prescribe painkillers rather than recommend physical rehabilitation or alternative pain management. A proliferation of time-released, opioid painkillers flooded the market. Doctors were encouraged by the pharmaceutical companies to push them on patients and insurance companies were quick to pay for the drugs that were cheaper than other pain-management techniques. This led to widespread opioid pill abuse.

In 2013, the DEA began reducing the amounts of pills the pharmaceutical companies could manufacture. This drawback in supply led many addicts to turn to heroin, the illicit Schedule 1 narcotic that many painkillers base their chemistry on.

The problem of heroin addiction has been exacerbated by powerful additives used to strengthen street heroin. Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid pain medication that is 50 to 100 times more powerful than morphine. Fentanyl is being illegally manufactured and exported by Chinese labs and cut with heroin for distribution. Addicts seek the augmented high at the elevated risk of death by overdose.

And every day, a new story of another overdose fills the front pages. Earlier this month, Philadelphia saw 35 deaths in five days, all attributed to heroin cut with fentanyl. Another three died in York County - in a span of five hours. Police finding unattended children, found in squalid conditions with parents nodding off or dead from heroin, have become a common occurrence.

State and local officials are scrambling to find a solution to this growing trend. Governor Wolf recently signed a bill that would restrict prescriptions for minors and increase educational outreach. But these programs do little to address the underlying causes of addiction.

Smart Talk will spend the hour discussing opioid addiction and the consequences thereof. Deb Beck, President of the Drug and Alcohol Service Providers Organization of Pennsylvania will discuss the scope of the problem and some of the causes for the outbreak.

Jason Snyder, Special Assistant to Pennsylvania's Secretary of Human Services, will talk about a $20 million effort to fight the opioid addiction outbreak.

York County Assistant District Attorney David Sunday will talk about what he's seeing in the courtroom and which programs are most effective in treating addicts. Transforming Health Reporter Ben Allen will walk us through the maze of state agencies and private service providers working to combat opioid addictions.