Forty-one locations around Montgomery County will be collecting unused prescription drugs this month for the annual drug Take Back Day.
Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele and the Police Chiefs Association of Montgomery County have announced that between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. on Saturday, April 29, dozens of Montgomery County locations will be collecting unused drugs.
The day coincides with national Take Back Day and will be the largest since the first Take Back Day in 2010 in terms of participating locations. The day will serve as an opportunity for Montgomery County residents to clean out their medicine cabinets of unwanted or unused and expired prescription medications and dispose of them in a safe and environmentally friendly way. The day is aimed at combatting the growing opioid and heroin epidemic by ridding homes of unnecessary prescription medications that can often lead to addiction.
“The growing participation in Take Back Day and the huge amount of medicine we are collecting reflects the growing awareness of the heroin and opioid epidemic and how important it is to get opioids like oxycodone out of medicine cabinets,” said Steele. “Collecting unwanted medications is just one way the District Attorney’s Office and law enforcement in Montgomery County are working together to combat drugs in our communities and decrease overdose deaths, which has spiked dramatically to 249 deaths in 2016.”
In 2016, Take Back Days in Montgomery County yielded a total of almost 12,000 pounds of unwanted or expired medications. The Take Back Day collection that took place in the spring of 2016 obtained 5,637.5 pounds of medication and the fall Take Back Day gathered 5,943.9 pounds. Those numbers include unwanted prescriptions and over-the-counter medications that were collected through drop-offs. They also include amounts collected by police departments through their permanent MedReturn boxes. Since the program began in 2010, more that 29,000 pounds of medicine have been collected.
“We’re asking all residents to do their part by cleaning out their cabinets of unneeded medications and dropping them off April 29 at one of the many Take Back sites throughout the county,” said Steele.
A full list of locations available for medication drop-offs accompanies this article.
