LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Saturday marked another National Prescription Drug Take Back Day. Law enforcement across the Natural State and the country were out collecting unwanted and unused medication.
"You know, it's good to get rid of them," Lt. Cody Burk with the Pulaski County Sheriff's Office said. "Children could come across them and get into them, not thinking that it was medication, or that it could have been, thought it might be candy or something like that."
That's important – it's why the Pulaski County Sheriff's Office had four locations around central Arkansas for anyone giving back that medication.
But why is this important? Couldn't the medication just be thrown away, or even flushed down the toilet?
"If you flush it down the toilet or if you throw them in the trash, we find that you'll find chemicals that get in the water table and you start seeing things, prescription drugs showing up," Burk said. "Put them in the incinerator and you completely avoid all that."
But there's more to this than just disposing them correctly. Unused medication, especially when it's prescribed, could be addictive for some.
"It's important to realize that with each one of those numbers, there's a face, there's a family," Kirk Lane, the Arkansas Drug Director, said. "There's a brother or sister, there's a family member involved there."
Lane said being proactive is better than reactive in this case – you could save someone's life.
"Starting within the homes. Getting in the homes of people who need to know this information so they can monitor their prescription drugs properly so they don't get in the wrong hands. It saves lives," he said.
If you missed Saturday's 10-2 p.m. drop-off window, don't worry. This happens twice a year – the next event is in April, and the Pulaski County Sheriff's Office is always accepting unused medication.
Burk said anything they collect Saturday is a win, even if it is just one bottle of pills.
"We'll end up getting over a thousand pounds of prescription drugs, and that's quite a bit," he said. "That's a lot of drugs that we're getting from our agency and there's many agencies throughout the state doing it today."