Boone County collects 462 pounds in drug take back event
On Monday morning, Major Tom Reddin had 24 boxes of various pills stacked in his office.
The DEA came to the Boone County Sheriff’s Department later that day to take them away, completing another year of the area’s participation in the federal drug take back event.
Reddin helped organize the Fall session, collecting 462 pounds of prescription medication last Friday and Saturday at eight locations. He called it an “average” collection by weight, considering the difficulty in topping April’s record 895-pound collection. Reddin said two nursing homes contributed their unused prescription pills, which drove those numbers up.
The national take back event is one method law enforcement has employed in recent years to curb a growing health crisis. The CDC estimates 2 million people were addicted to prescription painkillers in 2014, and health officials continue to grapple with new ways to address it. ABC 17 News reported in September on the city of Columbia’s desire to join with other counties in Missouri in establishing a prescription drug monitoring program. That would allow pharmacies to see where, when and for what drug a person filled a prescription, and allow a doctor to notice signs of abuse.
Reddin said a decade ago, he would not have imagined law enforcement would be conducting drug take back events. But in the seven years of hosting them, Redding considers the “four to five tons” he estimates they’ve collected.
“Do I call that a success? Absolutely,” Reddin told ABC 17 News. “That’s four to five tons of medication that is not showing up on the streets, that no one is overdosing on.”
The DEA takes the drugs collected in these events to “incinerators” for disposal, Reddin said. While painkillers have even had the attention of the White House, Reddin believes it’s necessary to collect all unused pills. It protects groundwater from pills thrown in the trash that make their way to landfills, and keep it away from those who aren’t prescribed to use them.
