AS A PART of the National Prescription Drug Take Back Initiative, a take-back event will be held Sat., April 27, between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., at the Battle Ground Police Department, 507 SW 1st St., Battle Ground. Anyone can bring their expired or unused prescription drugs to the event and police personnel will safely dispose of them. This initiative helps to prevent drug abuse and also helps to prevent accidental poisoning of young children.
Demographically, senior citizens in Clark County use more medications normally than other age groups and many older adults might often have an abundance of leftover medications that a spouse or someone who passed away was taking.
More often than not, those leftover pills end up being stashed in a medicine cabinet and are not given a second thought. However, for people with children or grandchildren who might have access to these unused medications, forgetting about those stashed leftover pills could lead to a very dangerous situation.
For senior citizens, or anyone else who may have a stock pile of unused medications, even just one bottle of unused pills, there is somewhere they can be taken and disposed of safely. As part of the National Prescription Drug Take Back Initiative, people with unused medications can bring them to the Battle Ground Police Department Sat., April 27, between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. Police department personnel will safely dispose of them. The police department is located at 507 SW 1st St., Battle Ground.
Sgt. Shane Gardner of the Clark County Sheriff’s Office said that while they do focus a lot of their advertising for these take-back events on the demographic of senior citizens through S.A.L.T. (Seniors and Law Enforcement Together) functions, it’s especially important for anyone with young children to get rid of their unused medications.
“Because we want people with young children (teen-infant) to bring in meds sitting around, we also want to get the word out to them,” Gardner said. “Think about the last out-patient surgery you or a loved one had ... how many pills did they have leftover after they healed and were back on their feet? I know I had a whole bottle of Vicodin (leftover) once. I used about four pills and had about 30 leftover. I have young kids in my house ... those pills needed to go.”
Since this take-back event is DEA sponsored, Gardner said all collected medications will be shipped to them and they will be incinerated. Because every law enforcement agency in Clark County has a prescription dropoff point, Gardner said medicine returned during the rest of the year is disposed of along with other confiscated illicit substances, also by incineration.
Although the take-back events are designed to be a take back for controlled substances, requiring a prescription, Gardner said they end up taking back any kind of pill.
“We always get pet medications and really old children’s vitamins, etc.,” Gardner said. “We don’t care. If it is a pill that a child could put in his/her mouth, we want it disposed of if it is not needed any longer.”
These DEA-sponsored, take-back events are held for several reasons, including to reduce prescription drug abuse, to reduce accidental poisonings, to reduce medicines in the environment and more. According to www.takebackyourmeds.org, in Washington state, almost 11 percent of teens use medicines for non-medical reasons, a rate that’s among the highest in the nation. Also, about 1/2 of the 37,000 phone calls to the Washington Poison Center concern young children who have been poisoned by medicines found at home.
As far as packaging goes, Gardner said many people turn in their pills in their bottles and then a lot of time is spent emptying out every individual bottle. A team uses a black Sharpie to black out the patient and doctor information, the pill bottle is set aside with the recyclable plastics and the pills are disposed of. Gardner said some people also just hand over zip lock bags of pills, which he said they will take.
According to a summary chart of DEA collection events in the Clark County area in 2011 and 2012, the total of all waste collected (medical wastes and recyclable materials) was 3,373.9 pounds. A total of 1,071 people participated in the 2011 and 2012 DEA-sponsored take-back events in the Clark County area.
People dropping off unused medications should let law enforcement officials know if there is anything dangerous (sharp objects, mercury thermometers, poisons) included in what they are dropping off. Participants should also stay in their car at the take-back event, as those working at the event will come to them to collect their items.
“We are not tracking who drops off anything,” Gardner said. “Our surveys are to help us better market our event and so that we can have information to help us with spreadsheets, etc.”
To learn more about what you can do with unused medications and to learn more about the dangers of keeping prescription drugs around that aren’t needed, visit www.takebackyourmeds.org. For more information about area take-back events, visit www.rxreturnclarkcounty.org or call (360) 397-2121, ext. 4352.
