Police Collect 227 Pounds of Medication at Suisun Drug Take-Back

Late last month, Suisun City residents turned in 227 pounds of unwanted prescription drugs and five boxes of medical sharps on the day of the National Drug Take-Back Day.

Another drug take-back day will be held May 18.

Here's what the Suisun City Police Department had to say about the event:

The prescription drug take-back event sponsored recently by the Suisun City Police Department brought in more than 227 pounds of outdated or unneeded medications, as well as five boxes of used or obsolete medical sharps.

The event, held April 27 at the Suisun City Police Department, was a partnership with the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), Boy Scout Troop #100, the Suisun City Alcohol Tobacco and Other Drugs (ATOD) Task Force, the Solano County Integrated Waste Management Task Force and the Suisun City Police Cadets.

Any residents who missed this opportunity to clean out their medicine cabinets will get another chance on May 18 when a second Prescription Drug Take Back Day will be held from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Police Department, in partnership with the ATOD Task Force. This event is funded by the Solano County Board of Supervisors.  For more information call 707-421-7201.

The DEA and local police partners sponsor these drug take back events to help residents remove medications from their homes that have outlived their medical purposes or are expired.  Medications that languish in home cabinets are highly susceptible to misuse and abuse.  Rates of prescription drug abuse nationally are rising, as are the number of accidental poisonings and overdoses.  Many abusers get their supply of drugs from the medicine cabinets of relatives.

The Prescription Drug Take-Back Day also addresses the environmental and health risks of disposing of pharmaceuticals.  Expired prescription medicines cannot be flushed into the sewer system or buried in a landfill without risking significant damage to native ecosystems and water supplies.  Because these compounds cannot be removed from sewage by treatment, any present in treated wastewater is released into local waterways.

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