ROANE COUNTY, Tenn. — Roane County authorities said they've seen an increase in the number of drug overdose deaths in recent years. They reported 58 deaths in 2022, compared to 21 deaths in 2019.
"It's awful to see and it's sad for the community. Parents are having to bury their 30-year-old children. People's lives are just being cut short," said Tim Phillips, the Roane County Chief Deputy.
While opioids have been the main source of overdoses throughout the 2000s, Roane County's medical examiner says something has changed.
"Since 2018, we legally had to write a more specific prescription. We have to certify why it's medically necessary and put a reason why a person is taking it. You can see that's when opiate deaths went down and fentanyl and meth deaths skyrocketed," said Thomas Boduch, the medical examiner of Roane County.
He said those are two drugs that can often be tampered and manipulated with and then sold to people.
"A lot of it is fentanyl that was never made for human use — the biggest being Xylazine, which is a horse tranquilizer. We've had about 15 deaths from that since 2021," said Boduch.
For law enforcement, it's important to find where the drugs in an overdose case came from so that they can end the supply and also legally prosecute the people who provided the drug.
"We've had some people charged with second-degree murder because we're able to show that they provided the substance that led to that person's death," said Boduch.
The Roane County Sheriff's Office said it wants people to understand that overdoses are a real possibility when using an unprescribed drug.
"You just don't know what you're getting, what you get from your dealer today could be different tomorrow. It's a dangerous game that could lead to your death," said Phillips.