Prescription drugs

The Cullman County Sheriff’s Office is participating in “National Prescription Drug Take Back Day” Saturday.  

From 9 a.m-1 p.m., Cullman County residents can drop off their unused or expired medication to the Cullman County Sheriff’s Office, and deputies will dispose of the medication safely.

The aim is to provide a safe, convenient, and responsible means of disposing of prescription drugs, while also educating the general public about the potential for abuse and medications, according to a sheriff’s office news release. 

This is the Drug Enforcement Administration’s thirteenth National Prescription Drug Take-Back Day. 

On the most recent event in October, almost 366 tons of medication was turned into the DEA and its more than 4,000 community partners at more than 5,000 collection sites nationwide. Over the life of the program, people across the country have removed 7.1 million pounds (more than 3,500 tons) of prescription drugs from medicine cabinets, kitchen drawers and nightstands.

“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,” said Acting U.S. Attorney Robert O. Posey. “The easiest and most effective thing you can do to protect your loved ones from prescription drug abuse and possible addiction, and even potential progression to heroin use, is to clean out your medicine cabinets and drop those drugs off for proper disposal. The vast majority of new heroin users started with painkillers.”

Unused medicines in the home are dangerous because the majority of the 6.4 million Americans who abused prescription drugs in 2015 — — including the almost 4 million who abused prescription painkillers — say they obtained those drugs from friends and family, including from a home medicine cabinet, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health released last month. 

Some painkiller abusers move on to heroin. Four out of five new heroin users started with painkillers. Almost 30,000 people — 78 a day — died from overdosing on these painkillers or heroin in 2014, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

DEA officials say medicines that languish in home cabinets are highly susceptible to diversion, misuse and abuse. At the same time, Americans now are 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. 

The Take-Back Day provides an easy, anonymous, secure and environmentally safe way to dispose of unused prescription or over-the-counter drugs. Collection sites will be set up throughout communities nationwide.

If this weekend is not convenient, there also are permanent, secure prescription drop-off sites in the metro Birmingham area. Locations include 24-hour Walgreens Pharmacies in Hoover, Roebuck and Bessemer, and some police and fire departments. To find a location near you, go online to rxdropbox.com.