As the heroin epidemic continues to spiral out of control, Ocean County Prosecutor Joseph Coronato has a message for everyone:

"It's important that people understand you don't wake up one morning and start doing heroin," Coronato said Friday morning. "It starts with prescription pills. It starts in the medicine cabinet."

Coronato was speaking on a conference call hosted by Rep. Tom MacArthur on the heroin and opioid epidemic in South Jersey. Burlington County Prosecutor Robert Bernardi was on the call as well, discussing some of the issues faced in both counties. MacArthur told listeners, who included law enforcement members, state and local officials and media, of initiatives at the federal level to combat the problem.

Coronato said that even as efforts to battle the heroin epidemic continue to grow, the crisis is deepening.

To date, 120 people in Ocean County have died from opioid overdoses, Coronato said, more than died in Ocean County in all of 2015, when the year-end total was 118. The 2014 heroin overdose death toll was 112. He said he predicts the toll will be 150 to 160 people by year's end.

Coronato said the problem is that it's not simply heroin at this point: "It really is a cocktail being distributed."

"The heroin is laced with fentanyl," Coronato said. Fentanyl itself is 100 times more powerful than morphine, he said, and law enforcement is even seeing carfentanyl — a synthetic opioid that Coronato said is 10,000 times more powerful than morphine. In a three-week period this summer where there were 20 overdoses, 17 of them were linked to heroin laced with fentanyl, he said.

The drug is so powerful and so dangerous that police officers have been harmed handling it. A police officer in Atlantic City overdosed while handling packets of the drug because the fentanyl was absorbed into his skin.

Narcan continues to help people survive overdoses; there have been 300 Narcan reversals in Ocean County this year, Al Della Fave of the prosecutor's office said. But Coronato said it will continue to take a concerted effort that includes education, partnerships with the health care community and more.

The county's partnership with St. Barnabas, where those rescued by Narcan are offered the opportunity to go right into treatment, has seen 67 percent of those offered help accept it, Coronato said. Those efforts, which have included flying addicts to treatment facilities out of state, have been funded through drug forfeiture proceeds, he said.

Bernardi urged MacArthur to help protect local authorities' ability to garnish the property of drug dealers, which he said funds a great deal of the work being done to fight the crisis in Burlington County. There has been discussion of tightening the rules on how authorities can seize property due to reports that claim some law enforcement agencies are abusing the tactic.

MacArthur said there is a bipartisan effort actively trying to address the problem and offer tools for states and local law enforcement to attack the problem, and said he would continue to support efforts to protect drug forfeiture funds.

"We all know that prescription pain killer have been a gateway for many to heroin," MacArthur said. "I'm proud that in South Jersey we've been leading the way not only in the state but in the country in fighting this epidemic."

"You all are saving human lives every day and giving people a second chance to get treatment and turn around their lives," he said.

Ocean County Prosecutor Joseph Coronato. Karen Wall photo