A drug court could be established in Haywood County over the next couple of years if the North Carolina General Assembly passes a budget. 

Just off Waynesville’s North Main Street, in one of the town’s most blighted areas, on top of a small hill sits a little green house that many people drive by each day, without noticing it at all. 

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.

A successor has been chosen for Sylva Police Chief Tammy Hooper following a three-month search by a panel of Western North Carolina law enforcement and managers.

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. 

Nine months after a traffic accident that resulted in a pair of drug possession charges for a lead law enforcement supervisor with the Blue Ridge Parkway, the officer is still barred from performing law enforcement duties — despite the charges being dismissed and expunged from the record.

Not long after retired U.S. Air Force officer and former teacher Mary Ford moved to Waynesville with her husband, she decided to enroll in something called the Waynesville Civilian Police Academy. The next year, she found herself in charge. 

The longstanding brouhaha over a makeshift dwelling near Frog Level has escalated to the point where enforcement action is likely in the coming days. 

It’s likely to be another tough budget year as Macon County commissioners are faced with a growing list of capital and security improvement needs, increased health care costs and stagnant property values.