Hagerstown City Council steps up efforts to promote drug-free neighborhoods

HAGERSTOWN, Md. ( DC News Now ) — City Council will meet in Hagerstown Monday night to reaffirm its commitment to substance abuse and prevention.

Emily Keller, Hagerstown’s previous mayor and now Gov. Wes Moore’s special cabinet secretary for opioid response in Maryland, is making a presentation about the Washington Goes Purple campaign.

The campaign is the city’s initiative to spark community support for drug-free neighborhoods.

“We really try to help people who have lost someone to addiction,” Chelsea McGraw with the Washington County Division of Behavioral Health, said. “We try to raise awareness for overdoses and things like that. I think it’s really important that the community sees the work we are trying to do.”

According to Maryland’s Department of Health, there were just over 1,600 unintentional opioid-related deaths in the state in the third quarter of last year.

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