Saturday, April 24, from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m., the City of Commerce will be participating in a National Prescription Drug Take BAck event at the Commerce Police Department. The semi-annual community event is sponsored by the Drug Enforcement Administration and happnes in April and in October of each year.
The first Commerce event took place in April of 2019. Since then, each such event results in some 100 pounds of expired prescription medications collected from the local community. Nationally, the total amount of expired drugs collected in October of 2019 was 492.7 tons.
Disposing of expired or unwanted prescription drugs in this way benefits the community by preventing unauthorized acccess to the medicines (which could lead to abuse or criminal sales activity) and by keeping these chemicals out of the groundwater supply, something that can happen when drugs are tossed in the trash or flushed down the sewer system.
The opportunity to drop off old drugs Saturday is not limited to citizens of Commerce or those who live nearby; collection site locations can be determed by entering the nearest zip code at https://takebackday.dea.gov.
Commerce Police Sergeant Wesley Russell spoke with KETR's Jerrod Knight about the event.
