There were 92 fatal drug overdoses in Butler County in 2017.

The Butler County Coroner's office confirmed the number this week after toxicity test results came back for the final pending death investigations from last year.

That number is an increase of 18 over the 2016 total of 74. There were 47 cases in 2015, 33 in 2014 and 13 in 2013.

County residents who died of overdoses outside Butler County were not included in the figure.

“One is too many. I will always say that,” County Commissioner Kevin Boozel said Wednesday in reaction to the news.

Boozel said that the opioid crisis is a long-term problem and community leaders need to continue to work on raising awareness, providing the public with education and helping those affected.

“We are in an epidemic and facing reality is hard. We have to own the problem and I think the community recognizes it is a huge problem,” Boozel said.

What the tally of fatal overdoses does not reveal is how many people in the county have gone to rehab and are now living in recovery.

One encouraging sign for those people is that numerous employers around the county are taking an active role in helping people in recovery get back to work, Boozel said.

County Coroner William Young III said that he is optimistic that the number of fatal cases will decrease in 2018.

After 31 days, there is only one confirmed fatal overdose in 2018 with only one or two cases pending, he said.

“The police are doing a great job right now and I hope we can secure the (country's) borders better,” he said.

Of the 92 cases, coroner's reports for 78 were available Wednesday from the County Clerk of Courts. They reveal that 60 of the victims were male and 18 were female. In each case the death was ruled as accidental, though there was at least one suicide by drug overdose case in the county last year. Most of the deceased had multiple types of opioids or other drugs in their system, including fentanyl, heroin, morphine and cocaine.

In total the coroner's office handled 243 deaths in 2017, which was an increase from the previous year, when it handled 219 cases.

In 2017, 14 people died in the county from vehicle accidents, 3 died of homicide, 28 died of suicide, 89 died of natural causes and 17 died from other types of accidents, according to the coroner's office.

County residents who died while in the care of a doctor are not subject to an inquiry, while all unattended deaths are investigated by the coroner's office.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Pennsylvania, with an overdose death rate of 37.9 deaths per 100,000 residents, had the fourth-highest rate nationwide in 2016, behind only New Hampshire, Ohio, and West Virginia, which led the nation with 52 deaths per 100,000 residents.

According to state data, 4,642 Pennsylvanians died of drug overdoses in 2016 — a 44.1 percent increase from the previous year, when 3,264 state residents died of drug overdoses. Nearly 85 percent, or about 3,900, involved opioids according to the federal Drug Enforcement Administration and the University of Pittsburgh's school of Pharmacy.

In January, when Gov. Tom Wolf declared a statewide disaster emergency over the opioid crisis, he said that early numbers indicated 5,260 Pennsylvanians died of drug overdoses in 2017.