Mayor-Elect Murray: Drug Task Force

As we have reported here, Jane Murray is nothing if not ambitious. Less than one week after winning election as Portsmouth's next mayor, eight full weeks before she takes office, Ms. Murray has announced an extremely ambitious endeavor. She has declared "War on Drugs in Portsmouth and Scioto County." On her website (http://www.janemurrayformayor.com/), she announced the anti-drug effort as the "first board ...in the Murray administration": The Drug Task Force. Here is Ms. Murray's announcement.

War on Drugs

I heard from so many of you about our new efforts to fight the pill mills and the pervasive problem of prescription drugs. We can definitely declare a War on Drugs in Portsmouth and Scioto County.

Please email me to let me know you will help in the fight. Also, please let me know if you are willing to serve on a Drug Task Force that I will form soon after taking office in January. Send along any particular information and/or bio you wish me to have.

Even if you do not serve on the Task Force, we will ensure that you and everyone will know when the Task Force meets. We are working on having live feeds via computer video streaming and/or on the Government Access Channel – 24. We’ll advise as we go along.

Despite our past criticism of Ms. Murray, we find this effort to be intriguing and we offer her our sincere best wishes. We will leave the sniping and sarcasm to others. Certainly nothing can be accomplished against drugs unless the community joins together, and that will not happen without leadership. We will see if Ms. Murray is up to the task. Its success will take the cooperation of the Sheriff and Chief of Police (good luck with that), who disbanded their joint Southern Ohio Law Enforcement Drug Task Force in 2003. We hope that the community will provide the support and participation that the effort will require.