By Stephen Stirling

At least 1,901 people died from opioid overdoses in New Jersey last year, well over twice the number of people from the state who died in the attacks on Sept. 11.

Deaths involving heroin and fentanyl continued a meteoric rise in the Garden State, according to new data obtained by NJ Advance Media. Those involving heroin have more than doubled since 2013, while fentanyl-related deaths have risen an eye-popping 2,000% in the same span.

"I don't think the American people can sit by and tolerate this level of death for much longer," Gov. Chris Christie said in an interview earlier this month. 

Using a database of opioid deaths in 2016, NJ Advance Media mapped the approximate address of every person who died (while stripping out any personal, identifying information). The result: a grim portrait of a crisis that has blanked the state from end to end. 

Each dot represents one person. Click or tap a dot for the age of that person and the drugs found in their system upon their death. (A note about the data: The total is preliminary and could rise before the state Medical Examiner releases official numbers later this year.) 

The majority of the deaths involved heroin, but the meteoric rise of fentanyl could soon make it the state's most deadly drug.  Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid originally designed to treat end-stage cancer patients. It can be up to 25 times as powerful as street-level heroin.  

The data also shows an uptick in deaths involving cocaine. The stimulant was found in the system of 498 people who died as a result of opioids, up from 310 in 2014.  

The trends in New Jersey mirror that of the country at large. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently announced that about 64,000 people had died from drug overdoses in 2016, the majority of which involved opioids.  

Christie, the head of a national commission on opioids, has urged President Donald Trump to declare the crisis a national emergency. While Trump has voiced his support, has yet to do make a formal declaration.

"Ultimately, it's going to be the people that hold the purse strings and have the bigger bully pulpit than the one I have," Christie said. "But, this is a good time to do it."

The crisis is disproportionally affecting Millienials. While opioids killed scores in every generation in New Jersey last year, nearly a third were between 25 and 35 years old, according to the data.

Early indications from law enforcement officials are that 2017 is not expected to yield any significant change in the trend. But there are indications it could be much worse.

Bergen County, for example, has recorded 79 overdose deaths thus far in 2017. But law enforcement officials have been able to save 177 more with Narcan, an overdose antidote that is now in the hands of most law enforcement agencies in the state.

Still, just seven years ago, the number of overdoses exceeded the population of only a handful of towns in New Jersey.

Today, that number is 74.