Congratulations to Harford County Executive Barry Glassman and his administration for receiving a second achievement award from the National Association of Counties for their anti-heroin awareness campaign. The administration also was honored at last weekend's annual NACo conference in Long Beach, Calif., for its Track-It planning and zoning initiative.
Anyone who has read The Aegis in the past 18 months or visited our websites knows Harford County has a heroin abuse epidemic, as do many other places in the United States. You've also seen how there has been a multi-faceted effort to try to bring the epidemic under control, with very limited success to this point.
Glassman and his staff, in particular the Department of Community Services' Office of Drug Control Policy, haven't taken on the fight alone. There have been yeoman-like efforts by the Harford Sheriff Jeffrey Gahler and his deputies and staff, as well as by the county Health Department and numerous nonprofits in the county, many whose main mission is to help people get clean from substance abuse and to stay that way.
We want to take this opportunity, however, to single out Glassman in particular for taking the all-important first step on the road to admitting there was a heroin problem in Harford County and for standing up to it.
The fight will be hard and long and undoubtedly more will die before it is over. But you can't stop the dying if you aren't willing to face the dragon and admit its existence. For this we can thank Glassman for having that courage. It wasn't necessarily the political thing to say your county was in the stranglehold of drug abuse, but it was certainly the right thing, and we are all better for his efforts.