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Darke
County Drug Task Force...
Task
Force “takes back” prescription
drugs
Oct. 29, Family Health Services
Greenville,
Ohio – On October 29 from
10 a.m. to 2 p.m. the Darke County Drug Task Force along with Darke
County
Family Health, Darke County Solid Waste, and the Drug Enforcement
Administration (DEA) will give the public another opportunity to
prevent pill
abuse and theft by ridding their homes of potentially dangerous
expired,
unused, and unwanted prescription drugs.
Bring your medications for disposal to Family
Health Services at 5735
Meeker Rd, Greenville. The
service is
free and anonymous, no questions asked.
In
April of this year, nationwide
Americans turned in 376,593 pounds—188 tons—of prescription drugs at
nearly
5,400 sites operated by the DEA and more than 3,000 state and local law
enforcement partners.
This
initiative addresses a vital
public safety and public health issue.
Medicines that languish in home cabinets are
highly susceptible to
diversion, misuse, and abuse. Rates of prescription drug abuse in the
U.S. are
alarmingly high, as are the number of accidental poisonings and
overdoses due
to these drugs. Studies
show that a
majority of abused prescription drugs are obtained from family and
friends,
including from the home medicine cabinet. In addition, Americans are
now
advised that their usual methods for disposing of unused
medicines—flushing
them down the toilet or throwing them in the trash—both pose potential
safety
and health hazards.
Four
days after the first Take-Back event
in September 2010, Congress passed the Secure and Responsible Drug
Disposal Act
of 2010, which amends the Controlled Substances Act to allow an
“ultimate user”
of controlled substance medications to dispose of them by delivering
them to
entities authorized by the Attorney General to accept them. The Act also allows the
Attorney General to
authorize long term care facilities to dispose of their residents’
controlled
substances in certain instances. DEA
has
begun drafting regulations to implement the Act, a process that can
take as
long as 24 months. Until
new regulations
are in place, local law enforcement agencies like the Darke County Drug
Task
Force and the DEA will continue to hold prescription drug take-back
events
every few months.
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