With overdose deaths at all-time highs, North Carolina lawmakers moved this year to make easier to prosecute drug dealers who sell a fatal dose.

Victims' families say "death by distribution" laws are a step forward, but they want more prosecutions.

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Debbie Peeden's granddaughter, Ashley, overdosed in a Greensboro apartment in 2021.

In the years since, Peeden has been relentless: holding signs in the rain outside the state capitol, showing up at meetings and reaching out to law enforcement, all to try and raise awareness of the threat of fentanyl, and a tool she says prosecutors often fail to use: North Carolina’s death by distribution law.

She saw some success last week when Gov. Roy Cooper signed into law a change that makes it easier to link a drug dealer to an overdose death. The law now no longer requires proof that drugs were sold to the victim in the case of a fatal overdose, just that those drugs were supplied by the suspect.

Peeden and other families are also pressing for prosecutors to bring those charges. Unless they use the charge, the change in the law means nothing.

"It shouldn’t depend on the county," Peeden says.

She says prosecutors in her granddaughter's case did not use the old death by distribution charge.

She hopes now that will change.

"By having this law go into effect, I’m getting justice for her. Even for those who didn’t get justice, it’s still a win," Peeden says.

Most changes to the death by distribution law are set to take effect on Dec. 1. Many are hoping this is a start.

Jeff Coates
Coates died from an overdose. He was 47 when he died.

“This is a beginning,” said Jane Coates, who lost her son, Jeff, to an overdose as well.

Jeff was 47 years old when he died, and Coates remembers him as one of the best painters in Durham. She says her son wasn’t the kind to take drugs, and she’s never been given a full accounting of what happened the night he died.

She believes harsher sentencing - and more death by distribution prosecutions - are a step in the right direction.

“Absolutely. Because I don’t have closure. This is what a lot of families are seeking. They’re doing it for themselves, and for their child that’s gone,” said Coats.