Urbandale Police Collect Six Boxes of Drugs

Urbandale Police collected six large boxes of prescription medications Saturday, said Urbandale Police Information Officer Randy Peterson.

"It's probably a little less than we collected last fall, but we're having the collections more often," he said. "Last year, when we did the first one, I had a lady come up and thank me. She said she had held on these medications for 13 years."

Saturday was the annual drug take-back initiative sponsored by the U.S. Department of Drug Enforcement.

The effort is part of a national push to get rid of unused or expired prescription drugs as a way to curb the rise in abuse of those drugs.

Peterson said the drugs generally are disposed of by burning them because they can pollute the soil and water if they are thrown out in trash and go to landfills.