More than 1,000 pounds of unused medication collected

The Garland County Sheriff’s Department and the Hot Springs Police Department collected over 1,000 pounds of unused prescription drugs during Saturday’s National Prescription Drug Take Back Day, representatives from each agency said.

“To combat the drug epidemic we have going on, we have to look at it from all different angles. Enforcement is one area that we work very hard, the other being rehabilitation. These drug take-backs have turned out to be a really effective way to get these drugs off the streets,” Garland County Sheriff Mike McCormick said Monday.

The sheriff’s department collected 798 pounds of prescription drugs. That number is a combination of pills collected from the event on Saturday and other donations made to the drop box at the sheriff’s office throughout the year.

The police department collected 158 pounds of prescriptions on Saturday but combined with the prescriptions collected since October, they have collected 681 pounds of unused or unwanted prescriptions.

The semiannual event is hosted by the attorney general’s office and is aimed at getting the public to dispose of unused or expired medications, and educating as many people as possible

about the dangers prescription medications can pose.

Although the event was sponsored for one day, both the sheriff’s department and police department have permanent secure boxes where citizens can dispose of unused, unwanted and expired prescriptions during regular business hours.

“We’ll empty that box in our lobby every couple of weeks and we boxed up three full cardboard boxes on Saturday alone,” Hot Springs police Officer 1st Class Joey Williams said Monday.

McCormick said they see a lot of people who don’t use all their prescription, people who get a prescription and end up never taking it, and family members of people who have died and left large amounts of prescriptions in their medicine cabinets.

“We want to encourage people to use our drug take-back boxes to get rid of the unwanted prescriptions so that (their) prescription cabinet does not become the next drug dealer,” Williams said

After collecting the contents of the drop boxes, the forfeited prescriptions were turned over to the state police and with the help of the DEA, disposed of. McCormick said they are typically incinerated.