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The Drug Enforcement Administration seized these bricks of fentanyl in Buffalo last year, totaling 36 pounds of the drug.

(Drug Enforcement Administration)

BUFFALO, N.Y. In just 11 days, as many as 23 people have died of overdoses from a high-powered batch of heroin, Erie County officials said today.

The Buffalo News reported that county health officials are urging heroin users to throw out any recently bought bags of the drug because it could be laced with the more lethal painkiller fentanyl.

At least 19 of the 23 heroin-overdose deaths in Erie County since Jan. 29 were believed to be related to heroin laced with "an extremely fatal batch of fentanyl," Erie County Executive Mark C. Poloncarz said.

"If you have a packet of this drug you recently purchased, it is basically a death sentence," Poloncarz told the Buffalo News.

Fentanyl has also had a lethal impact in Central New York. Eleven people who died of drug overdoses last year had both heroin and fentanyl in their systems, according to the Onondaga County Health Department.

Drug addiction experts and police believe drug dealers have started sneaking packets of fentanyl into the mix of heroin, often without telling the people they're selling the drug to.

The dealers often hope they'll get more business when other users hear that people have overdosed on the more-potent fentanyl, the experts said.

Fentanyl is 30 to 50 times more powerful than heroin, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

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The heroin addict no one expected: He had a good job, a wife, two college degrees

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