Bradley Newcamp became a grim statistic last week.

Newcamp, a 29-year-old Mars native, was found dead July 28 in tall grass behind a West Cunningham Street business in Butler, the victim of an apparent heroin overdose.

Forensic tests were inconclusive — Assistant Coroner Larry Barr noted that his body decayed in the July heat for two to four days before being discovered.

“It's not a pretty picture,” Barr said after examining the remains.

Police and the courts were aware of Newcamp's drug problem. Only two weeks earlier, Newcamp was arrested for possession of heroin and drug paraphernalia. There had been other arrests dating back to 2013.

The same morning Newcamp was declared dead, the acting deputy administrator of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, Jack Riley, was updating a congressional subcommittee on the nation's heroin and opioid epidemic. His testimony was not encouraging.

“There were over 43,000 deaths in 2013, or approximately 120 per day, over half of which involved either a prescription painkiller or heroin.” Riley told the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security and Investigations. The numbers have only increased since then.

Overdose deaths involving heroin are increasing at an alarming rate having almost tripled since 2010. Today's heroin at the retail level costs less and is more potent than heroin the DEA encountered a decade ago, Riley said. It comes across the porous southwest border from Mexican drug cartels with efficiency and sophistication that keep the price low and the supply plentiful.

With increasing frequency, pain patients are turning to heroin when their legitimate prescription opioid medications run out.

Jeffrey West is another alleged statistical junkie.

Arrested July 20 at Butler Memorial Hospital while in possession of several dozen stamp bags of heroin, West, 35, told police he has a 45-bag-a-day habit.

That claim seems improbable. Assuming eight hours of sleep daily, it means an average of three hits of heroin every hour. At that rate, the ritual of heating heroin to a liquid state, applying a tourniquet and injecting the drug intravenously would be almost constant.

And the frequency of West's claimed drug consumption would leave him little time to raise the $450 or more needed every day to pay for his habit. Investigators probably are working on the assumption that he was selling the drug as well as consuming it to raise the money to support his addiction.

One former addict, who identifies herself as Pink Hair Female Aviator, wrote anonymously on a Yahoo Answers website about the money-for-drugs treadmill:

“We don't pay rent. We don't pay any bills. We don't eat. We steal. We sell everything we have. What we can't sell we trade. We beg. We borrow. We work at first. Some turn tricks (prostitute) for dope. Then we cash in our 401K and spend all that. Then we start dealing to support our habit.”

Statistics track the downward spiral of drug addiction. Unfortunately the statistics add a layer of abstraction to the tragedy described by musician Neil Young: Every junkie is a setting sun.

Or, as DEA official Jack Riley testified, “These are our family members, friends, neighbors and colleagues.”

Bradley Newcamp left behind a 9 month-old son. In lieu of flowers, the obituary asked for memorial contributions to support the child.