RUMFORD — The Police Department will set up from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, April 30, at the station and Hannaford supermarket to receive unused, unwanted or expired prescription drugs for safe disposal, no questions asked, Chief Stacy Carter said.
The service stems from the department’s partnership with the U. S. Drug Enforcement Agency.
For those who cannot turn in prescriptions then, they may be taken to the police station from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekdays between now and Saturday, April 30.
“The Rumford Police Department is partnering with DEA in this nationwide initiative to properly dispose of these unwanted prescriptions in an attempt to reduce the risk of accidental overdose by small children or others who mistook them for other medications,” Carter said.
Recent studies by the Environmental Protection Agency and others detected pharmaceutical drugs in varying concentrations in our nation’s water supplies, therefore they should not be flushed down the toilet, he said.
“Only drugs that are so potentially dangerous to people rather than the environment should be flushed,” Carter said. “Such drugs will say on their labels if they are flushable.”
Prescription medications, including those that contain controlled substances, are prescribed to specific people by their doctors.
“A drug can be helpful to someone with a particular sickness but harmful to others,” he said.
“One drug may interact with another that someone is taking in a way that can seriously harm or kill them. It is also illegal to give a controlled substance to someone else.”
“However, it is legal for you to give your unwanted medications to law enforcement,” Carter said.
“The DEA is particularly interested in medications containing controlled substances, but we will accept any medicines brought for disposal,” he said.
Needles will not be accepted.
“We will ask no questions about what you bring for disposal,” he said.
“If you want to protect your privacy, you can empty your bottles — except for liquids — into the bin and take the bottles home with you or you can black out with a marker your personal information on the bottles.”
“We will not be looking at or gathering any personal information,” Carter said.
The medication will be turned over to DEA to be incinerated according to federal and state environmental guidelines. For more information, visit www.justice.gov/dea/.
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