As a registered nurse from Williamsport, Charles Kiessling has seen his share of tragedy from heroin abuse. Recently a friend asked Kiessling to talk to her son about getting off drugs, but the boy overdosed and died before that happened.

Kiessling, who is also the Lycoming County coroner, signed the child’s death certificate — and instead of ruling the death accidental, he listed it as homicide.

“This hit me very personally,” he said. “I don’t care if I offend people. Drug dealers are murderers and belong in state prison.”

Last week in his county seat of Williamsport, Kiessling declared it’s time to stop dancing around the issue of heroin overdose deaths and “call it what it is.”

From here on, Kiessling said he’ll rule all drug overdose deaths are homicides.

“If you are selling heroin to someone and they die, isn’t that homicide?” he asked.

He’s got a point. There were nearly 2,500 drug overdose deaths in Pennsylvania in 2014, an increase of nearly 13 percent over the previous year. The 2015 deaths, which are still being compiled, will be even greater, despite the widespread introduction of the opiate antidote Narcan.

In Pennsylvania, county coroners have the option to list the manner of death as natural, accidental, suicide, homicide or undetermined. It has been standard operating procedure for coroners to list drug overdose deaths as accidental, but as Kiessling points out, the accidental death category fits those who die in traffic accidents or a fall off a ladder.

To continue ruling overdose death as accidental only downplays the severity of the growing heroin epidemic.

“If you are dealing drugs, you are a murderer,” he said.

Kiessling is president of the Pennsylvania State Coroner’s Association. He said he consulted with the association’s solicitor, Harrisburg lawyer Susan Shanaman, before changing the overdose rulings to homicide. Shanaman told him the National Association of Medical Examiners gives coroners the discretion to call overdose deaths homicide or accidental.

With Shanaman’s clearance, Kiessling says he’s urging other county coroners to consider ruling drug overdoses as homicide, although he adds the admission that “we can’t arrest ourselves out of this mess.”

For that matter, a coroner’s opinion on the manner of death is not binding on police. Rather, it’s only part of the information law enforcement considers in determining if a crime was committed and if someone can be charged.

Even so, the change in attitude might be significant. Heroin is a killer. It should be regarded as a killer, not as an accident.