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“It’s absolutely insane. This is nuts,” said District Attorney Eugene A. Vittone, a former paramedic who is trying to hold back the tide of drugs washing across Washington County, a Rust Belt community 30 miles south of Pittsburgh. On any day, Vittone said, the county averages five to eight overdoses, almost all from heroin. More are recorded each day in towns just over the county line. (Bernstein, 8/23)

Heroin is cheap, abundant and accessible, and communities across the nation, from big cities to small rural towns, are struggling with the consequences. In Marion, Ohio — once a thriving steel town — the trouble arrived around 2007, when the police started seeing balloons of heroin during routine traffic stops. Since then, heroin has changed many lives in Marion. It took Chrystina Carey's. (8/23)