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NORTHFIELD - Randy Barto had a few questions.

"Can I just dump them out of the bottle?" the Northfield resident asked. "Can I do that? I don't know what the deal is."

Barto was at the Northfield Police Department on Saturday to drop off old, expired and unused medications as part of Operation Medicine Cabinet, which federal Drug Enforcement Administration Agent Douglas S. Collier called the first-ever statewide effort in the country to provide a safe way to dispose of such drugs.

Northfield, one of more than 400 drop-off sites across the state, took in about 50 bottles' worth of old meds with about an hour left to spare on Saturday, according to Northfield police Sgt. Stephen Steinecke.

Barto brought along about six bottles - "Some four years old," he said - before peeling off the labels and handing them over.

‘We don't want to know," said Steinecke of the specific medications.

"I like this idea," Barto said. "I didn't want to throw them down the garbage disposal, and I didn't want to throw them out."

Fellow Northfield resident Esther Slota said that if not for Operation Medicine Cabinet, the medication she was dropping off "would have probably been sitting on a shelf 10 years from now. ... A couple of them, I don't even know what they were for, they've been in the closet for so long."

Steinecke said that the department gets calls about misuse of prescription medication about twice a week, usually involving people in their teens and early 20s. The most common abuse is of oxycodone, often marketed under the brand name Oxycontin, and hydrocodone.

"It's a shame," Steinecke said. "But they're so addictive."

Over in Linwood, Detective Jim Norris didn't keep track of how many bottles were dropped off - he and his department were happy to accept the bags of meds dropped off in the two bins.

"Don't know, not asking," he said.

The total number of people who dropped off medications wasn't available from the Atlantic County Prosecutor's Office on Saturday, but Steinecke said that the numbers would only increase as people learn more about the program.

"Once people start trusting that there's no strings attached," he said, "then next year we'll get an even better turnout."

Staff writer Martin DeAngelis contributed to this report.

Contact Steven Lemongello:

609-272-7275

SLemongello@pressofac.com

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