Heroin Epidemic, Talk to your Kids!

Heroin's toll: 'We have people dying' in Burrillville
Burrillville has a heroin problem. Six people have died of drug overdoses, four involving heroin, since Dec. 31, the police say, most of them young men in their 20s and 30s. February was the cruelest month: four fatal overdoses.

Small towns also can feel like a fishbowl for those who fear the stigma of addiction, making it especially hard to reach out for help. “Nobody wants to talk about it,’’ said the Rev. Darin R. Collins, of the Berean Baptist Church in the village of Harrisville, where a parishioner in 2014 died of a heroin overdose. “Everybody’s feeling all of this shame.’’

Yet, the spike in overdose deaths in Burrillville is not so different from what’s happening in a lot of small towns and suburbs, said Traci C. Green, a professor of emergency medicine and epidemiology at Brown University and deputy director of the injury-prevention center at Boston Medical Center. “The appearance of patterns like in Burrillville is not unusual,’’ Green said. “In fact, I think it’s what’s evolving to be our current norm.”

Green likens the spike in fatal overdoses to an outbreak of an infectious disease. Both spread among people in close proximity; both ignore geographic and socioeconomic boundaries.