More than 150 leaders from Cherokee, Clay, Graham, Haywood, Jackson, Macon and Swain counties in North Carolina gathered Aug. 16 in Bryson CIty for the 7 County Western North Carolina Community Summit to discuss strategies about how to collectively create better cooperation in their efforts to encourage lifelong recovery for those suffering from substance use abuse and dependence.

Editor’s note: Names have been changed to protect the identity of those interviewed for this story. 

Five miles down an Appalachian dirt road 45 minutes from nowhere is where Daphne Laurel was raised, right in the heart of the sparsely populated mountainous region hit hardest by the ongoing opioid crisis. 

After a routine surgery, Haywood County native Clayton Suggs ended up hooked on opioids until on the first day alone in his new apartment after a year of sobriety, his addiction eventually cost him his life. 

It was finally moving day, and that empty little Greensboro apartment must have seemed like a mansion to 29-year-old Clayton Suggs. 

Fitting, the lack of furnishings; the whole thing was a blank slate, a new start.

An investigation into a June 2018 incident involving the Blue Ridge Parkway’s Pisgah District Ranger Greg Wozniak concluded that Wozniak violated both Tennessee drug laws and federal rules found in the U.S. Department of Interior Personnel Bulletin and in a 1986 executive order mandating a drug-free federal workplace. 

Gov. Roy Cooper signed the Death by Distribution Act into law earlier this month, making it easier for prosecutors to charge drug dealers with second-degree murder for selling someone a lethal dose. 

By now, most everyone is familiar — often far too personally — with the toll of the opioid epidemic. Lost lives, stolen futures, vanished trust. Loved ones transformed into unrecognizable ghosts of themselves. Law enforcement, mental health and emergency services pushed past capacity. 

As homelessness continues to rise in Western North Carolina, Haywood County’s innovative and effective adult shelter is about to cut the ribbon on a brand new dorm designed to be a place of refuge for a critically underserved population. 

Of all the victims of the nation’s opioid epidemic, probably the most overlooked are the municipalities that have to expend taxpayer-funded resources to deal with the problem.

The weather matched the mood when the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians broke ground on a $39 million crisis stabilization unit Wednesday, April 24.