Fewer people died from heroin in Norway last year. The country recorded 342 drug-related deaths in 2024. This marked a decrease from 391 deaths the previous year.
Health Director Cathrine M. Lofthus said in a statement that heroin has dropped from the top three most common substances in fatal overdoses. This represents a notable shift in Norway's drug landscape.
Other opioids now cause the majority of deaths. Medications like morphine, oxycodone and codeine account for 36 percent of fatalities. Synthetic opioids including fentanyl and buprenorphine follow at 19 percent. Methadone causes 15 percent of deaths.
Health officials note that prescription medications and synthetic drugs appear to be replacing heroin as the main cause of overdose deaths. This reflects broader European trends where legal and synthetic substances increasingly dominate drug mortality statistics.
Drug use patterns vary significantly across Norwegian regions. In Oslo, heroin still caused one in five deaths. But in counties like Rogaland and Vestland, the drug was nearly absent as a cause of death in 2024.
Despite the recent decline, Lofthus emphasized that drug deaths have shown a steady increase since 2012. The current numbers do not represent random fluctuations but a concerning long-term trend moving in the wrong direction.
The changing drug mortality patterns suggest both successes in reducing traditional heroin use and new challenges from pharmaceutical and synthetic substances entering the market.