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Drop off your unwanted prescription drugs at Durango Police Department

The Durango Police Department will take any unused or expired medication for safe disposal from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday at the station’s lobby, 990 East Second Ave.

From the old ways of flushing them down the toilet to mixing them with kitty litter before tossing them in the trash, the Drug Enforcement Agency since 2010 has offered a better method to get rid of unwanted prescription drugs.

For anyone with old prescription medication lying around the house, Saturday is the day to have it properly disposed.

The Durango Police Department will take any unused or expired medication for safe disposal from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the station’s lobby, 990 East Second Ave.

“When you just put it in the trash, you run the risk of someone not prescribed that medication getting a hold of it,” said Sgt. Robert Brammer. “And a lot of prescriptions are dangerous, and this just alleviates that risk. We turn it over to the DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency), and they’ll be properly disposed of.”

In its sixth year and held biannually, National Drug Take Back Day encourages people around the county to rid their homes of potentially dangerous and unused prescription drugs. Last September, the DEA took in 350 tons from approximately 8,800 sites participating in the event. Since the program began, the agency has collected more than 5.5 million pounds – or 2,750 tons – of pills.

Brammer said this is the second or third year Durango has participated. He could not provide statistics for Durango’s take-back.

“Studies show that a majority of abused prescription drugs are obtained from family and friends, including from the home medicine cabinet,” the DEA said in a statement.

“In addition, Americans are now 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 DEA says.

The service is free, anonymous and a “no questions asked” affair, the DEA said.

Items not accepted include illegal drugs, chemotherapy drugs, needles, oxygen containers, pressurized canisters and radioactive substances. Police ask participants to remove labels and any identifying information before dropping off items.

The unwanted medication collected is destroyed in an incinerator, the same way the DEA destroys illegal drugs.

With nearly 70 percent of Americans taking at least one kind of prescription, according to the Mayo Clinic and Olmsted Medical Center, flushing medication down the toilet has raised environmental concerns.

“The major concerns to date regarding the presence of medications in surface water bodies have been increased bacterial resistance to antibiotics and interference with growth and reproduction in aquatic organisms such as fish and frogs,” according to a report by No Drugs Down the Drain, a California advocacy group.

“Aquatic organisms are sensitive to low levels of exposure and are particularly vulnerable when exposure occurs during developmentally sensitive times such as before birth and during juvenile stages of growth,” the group said.

Durango Utilities Director Steve Salka said he highly encourages people to take advantage of the drug take-back program, and similar programs at Walgreens and Mercy Regional Medical Center. He said currently, there’s no wastewater facility in America that can treat for drugs people flush.

“The technology hasn’t caught up to people’s bad behaviors,” Salka said.

Salka said the department monitors what is put back into the Animas River, though numbers collected by the state were not immediately available Wednesday.

And though the Federal Drug Administration said two years ago mixing medication with kitty litter or coffee grounds is a preferable method of disposal, there remains the risks of leakage into waterways.

“Several studies have shown that medicines in a landfill can be released to the local environment through the landfill liquid – or ‘garbage juice’ – that may be collected and sent to wastewater treatment plants,” Take Back Your Meds, a Washington advocacy group, said in a report. “Because wastewater treatment plants are not designed to remove medicines, drugs may be discharged to rivers and bays.”

jromeo@durangoherald.com



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