Prescription Drug Take Back Initiative
Apr 27, 2012 12:00 am
RUMFORD -- Rumford Police Department officers will set up at the Rumford Police Department from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday to receive unused, unwanted or expired prescription drugs for safe disposal, no questions asked.
If you are not able to bring your prescriptions to turn in at that time we will be able to take them at the Rumford Police Department between now and April 28 on weekdays between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m.
Police are partnering with DEA in this nationwide initiative to properly dispose of these unwanted prescriptions in an attempt to reduce the risk of accidental overdose by small children or others who mistook them for other medications.
Recent studies by the Environmental Protection Agency and others detected pharmaceutical drugs in varying concentrations in our nation’s water supplies, therefore they should not be flushed down the toilet. Only drugs that are so potentially dangerous to people rather than the environment should be flushed. Such drugs will say on their labels if they are flushable.
Prescription medications, including those that contain controlled substances, are prescribed to specific people by their doctors. A drug can be helpful to someone with a particular sickness but harmful to others. One drug may interact with another that someone is taking in a way that can seriously harm or kill them. It is also illegal to give a controlled substance to someone else. However, it is legal for you to give your unwanted medications to law enforcement.
The DEA is particularly interested in medications containing controlled substances, but we will accept any medicines brought for disposal. Needles will not be accepted.
No questions will be asked about what you bring for disposal. If you want to protect your privacy, you can empty your bottles (except for liquids) into the bin and take the bottles home with you or you can black out with a marker your personal information on the bottles. Police will not be looking at or gathering any personal information.
The medication will be turned over to DEA to be incinerated according to federal and state environmental guidelines. For more information, go to DEA.gov.