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Drug dropoff to keep children from old meds
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Cleaning out your medicine cabinet this week may be your best way to keep your children clean - of dangerous drugs.
That's part of the theory behind "Operation Medicine Cabinet," which will give people across New Jersey more than 400 places to safely dispose of their old, expired or unwanted prescription drugs or other medicines. The collection date is Saturday, Nov. 14.
The program's sponsors include the Partnership for a Drug-Free New Jersey, the federal Drug Enforcement Administration and hundreds of local and state law-enforcement agencies. Douglas S. Collier, a DEA agent based in New Jersey, calls it the first-ever statewide effort in the country to collect and safely get rid of such drugs.
Operation Medicine Cabinet's pitch is that by cleaning out drugs that you may well have forgotten, then dropping off those drugs Saturday at your local police station or community center, you can keep your teenagers or younger children from cleaning out the cabinet themselves.
Because too many children are slipping in there looking for cheap ways to get high, warns Angelo Valente, who heads the Partnership for a Drug-Free New Jersey, or PDFNJ. He says abuse of prescription medication does not get enough media attention but that it is a growing problem in drug-addiction cases.
Some children even report getting together with friends for "pharming parties" or "bowling parties," Valente said. The party theme is simple: Dip into the medicine cabinet at home, grab some pills, and sneak them out of the house. When you and your friends get together, everybody tosses the stolen stash into a bowl. Then everybody takes some of the pills - just to see what happens.
Based on those concerns, the PDFNJ started a publicity campaign last year called "Grandma's Stash." The widespread effort is a warning to parents and grandparents that some young people are looking no farther than the closest bathroom for their highs - without much idea of what the drugs they steal are actually supposed to do, or how dangerous they may be. So Valente advises anyone who is not cleaning their medicine cabinets to lock up their medicines, the same way parents have locked liquor cabinets for years.
And Saturday's collection is a natural outgrowth of the prescription-drug warnings. Valente says that once people started to understand why they should get rid of old medicines, they started asking how to get rid of them.
The old wisdom was to flush bad stuff down the toilet and make the danger disappear. But Tim Dillingham, of the American Littoral Society - a national environmental group based in New Jersey - was happy to hear that this program presents a much wiser way to get rid of the drugs. Dillingham says too many drugs have been reappearing in our lakes, rivers, bays and oceans.
"In Jamaica Bay, N.Y., studies are seeing flounder turning from male to female fish," he said, citing just one local example of the dangers of prescription drugs as pollutants. "Common sense tells us it's not a good idea to drink somebody else's medicine. And it's looking like it's not good for humans or fish."
The DEA's Collier will not give details on exactly how his agency will dispose of everything police collect Saturday, but he says its methods include incineration, and he promises they are much more environmentally responsible than flushing the whole chemical stew down the toilet.
And one last thing: Everyone involved also promises that Operation Medicine Cabinet will be completely anonymous. You do not have to give your name, and no one will ask. They just want you to get rid of all that old stuff from the cabinet safely - before somebody else gets rid of it for you.
Contact Martin DeAngelis:
609-272-7237
Operation Medicine Cabinet facts
Police will be available Saturday, Nov. 14, in more than 400 places across New Jersey to collect unused prescription drugs and other medicines. Most collection points are open from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Dropoff locations include 23 places in Atlantic County, 17 in Cape May County, five in Cumberland County and 10 in southern Ocean County.
For a complete list of dropoff spots and more details, click on the link with this story at:
Posted in New_jersey on Sunday, November 8, 2009 2:10 am Updated: 11:48 am.
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