Record collections expected from drug take-back events

Sunday, October 27, 2013

Arkansas Drug Director Fran Flener thought the first drug take-back event in 2010 would take care of Arkansans’ need to get rid of their surplus prescriptions drugs.

But in each of the six events, held twice a year, since the program was inaugurated in Arkansas, the amount of drugs disposed of by the public has grown, she said Thursday. In all, Arkansas residents across the state have surrendered 30 tons of prescription drugs, or about 90 million pills, in the program’s history, she said.

She expected the seventh event, held Saturday, to be the largest yet.

“The success has been phenomenal,” she said of the program.

City police and sheriff’s deputies set up collectionssites at about 150 locations throughout the state from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday to give people the opportunity to dispose of expired or unused drugs anonymously. Flener said the collected drugs will be picked up and taken to an approved Drug Enforcement Administration disposal facility where they will be burned.

The semiannual collection events are conducted by law enforcement agencies, Flener said, because many of the drugs are controlled substances.

The Arkansas Take Back program was started in 2010 to partner with the National Drug Control Strategy to reduce abuse of prescription drugs.

According to the take-back program’s website, there are several reasons why unwanted drugs pile up in medicinecabinets: Doctors change patients’ prescriptions, medicines are left over after a serious illness or death and some doctors over-prescribe pain medications.

The National Drug Control Strategy reported that of the 38,000 deaths in the United States in 2010 from drug overdoses, 22,000 were from prescription drugs.

The Washington County sheriff’s office set up a collection site at the Harps Food Store in Lincoln on Saturday. Chief Deputy Jay Cantrell said letting the drugs sit in the medicine cabinet presents the danger of young people abusing them and others being poisoned or accidentally overdosing on them.

“We think prescription-drug abuse is a big problem, and this gives people a way to get rid of unwantedand unneeded drugs,” he said.

Greenwood police were collecting prescription drugs Saturday at the Wal-Mart Supercenter in Greenwood. Sgt. Brandon Davis said he and officer Josh Mourton collected 30 pounds of unwanted medications in the first hour.

The department has participated in each of the six previous collections, Davis said, and collected between 200 and 250 pounds of drugs at the event in April. He said residents turn over to the department about 70 pounds of drugs in the months between collections.

“For us to get 200 to 250 pounds is phenomenal for a community of this size,” Davis said.

The two officers set up a table outside the store so people who didn’t need to shop could simply drive up and hand over their unwanted drugs. Several did, with one resident commenting he thought the program was a good service.

One woman approached Mourton to ask whether he would accept dog medication. Mourton said he would.

Greenwood Alderman Lance Terry stopped by to talk to the officers while they manned the table and said he thought it was a good way to get drugs off the street.

“It keeps drugs out of the hands of the wrong people,” he said.

On Saturday afternoon, the Pulaski County sheriff’s office said in a news release that it collected 647 pounds of prescription drugs in the take-back event, about 27 percent less than the 892 pounds collected during the spring event.

Officials favor incineration instead of flushing the drugsor putting them in landfills because of the damage the drugs can do to the environment.

Thrown into the trash and dumped in a landfill, the components of the medications can get into the groundwater. Officials advise against flushing them down the toilet for the same reason.

A 2011 statement from the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality saidstudies during the past 10 years suggest a detection of pharmaceuticals in treated wastewater, streams, lakes, groundwater and fish tissue. Wastewater-treatment plants are not set up to remove pharmaceutical waste, and the drugs pass through the system and into the state’s waters.

“These compounds once received by the streams have been shown to disrupt normal fish reproduction, slow development of amphibians and cause other impacts throughout the food chain,” according to the statement.

The Environmental Quality Department is one of many agencies that has lent its support to the Arkansas Take Back program.

Northwest Arkansas, Pages 12 on 10/27/2013