Possessing drugs on the Qualla Boundary will get a lot more expensive following a decision this month to ratchet up fines for anyone — enrolled and non-enrolled people alike — caught with illegal substances. 

Some surprising statistics regarding drug testing in Haywood County schools have raised questions about the policy’s cost and effectiveness.

Law enforcement officers in Haywood County are pulling double duty in the war on drugs: they’re saving lives as well as fighting crime.

A life-saving antidote to reverse drug overdoses is finding widespread acceptance amid the prescription pain pill epidemic.

It’s been a while since the old Mountain Credit Union building in Cherokee saw foot traffic from people looking to deposit checks or get financial advice, but its doors still swing open and closed with regularity — though for a much different purpose.

Drug addiction is perhaps the biggest crisis on the Qualla Boundary, and it’s time that tribal government got serious about punishing traffickers, members of Cherokee Tribal Council agreed last week.

It takes a village to combat a drug addiction or mental illness, and Richie Tannerhill is hoping to see a multitude of villages turn out when the inaugural Western Regional Rally for Recovery comes to Lake Junaluska Sept. 19.

Recently recovered from rotator cuff surgery, Haywood County Sheriff Greg Christopher hasn’t popped a single prescription pain pill since the operation. Instead, he’s been using a combination of ibuprofen and acetaminophen, over-the-counter meds that don’t pose the same risks of abuse and addiction as opioids. 

“Just this morning I was at the physical therapist,” he said in a May interview. “She said, ‘I cannot believe you didn’t take prescription meds.’ I said, ‘I didn’t need to.’”

A bigger number of Jackson County students could be subject to random drug testing if a proposed policy change being considered by the school board gets approved.

The future was looking increasingly frightening to 54-year-old Anita as she got to the end of her six-year prison sentence. 

All along, she had assumed that she’d be able to live with her mother while she got back on her feet, but a couple months before Anita’s sentence ended, her mother changed her mind. Anita had nowhere to go.