As the executive director of the nonprofit Pearl Institute here in Waynesville, I wanted to express my gratitude to The Smoky Mountain News for the feature story written by Cory Vaillancourt about the recent decision by the FDA to request more research into using the drug MDMA in combination with therapy to treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Flying in the face of stats from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs that say veterans continue to commit suicide at higher rates than non-veterans, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration last week declined to approve MDMA, a psychedelic compound, as a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder. 

When Pactiv Evergreen announced it would close its 115-year-old paper mill in Canton earlier this year, local leaders had to deal with a host of issues: the plight of the workers and their families, their health care coverage, declining school enrollment, pollution and the future of the site itself.

The first thing anyone likely sees when they walk into Amanda Seay’s Haywood County Courthouse office is her quote of the month. 

The Jackson County Sheriff’s Office has applied for a grant to fund a Medication Assisted Treatment program in the county’s detention center. This comes after the Jackson County Detention Center has had five deaths in less than eight years, two of which occurred in 2022.

No matter how it all shakes out in the end, Nov. 3, 2022 will be looked upon as a historic day in Western North Carolina as regional leaders took the first few tenuous steps towards creating an enduring partnership to combat the opioid epidemic.

Around midnight on Christmas Eve in 2006, Jonathan Lubecky found himself alone in a Raleigh tavern listening to church bells chiming off in the distance.