In rural America, deadly costs of opioids outweigh the dollars tagged to address them

Tim Buck knows by heart how many people died from drug overdoses in his North Carolina county last year: 10. The year before it was 12 — an all-time high.

Those losses reverberate deeply in rural Pamlico County, a tightknit community of 12,000 on the state’s eastern shore. Over the past decade, it’s had the highest rate of opioid overdose deaths in North Carolina.

“Most folks know these individuals or know somebody who knows them,” said Buck, the county manager and a lifelong resident, who will proudly tell anyone that four generations of his family have called the area home. “We all feel it and we hate it when our folks hurt.”