Paramus Houses Bergen's First Project Medicine Drop Box

Paramus Police Department is the first in the county to serve as a Project Medicine Drop location.

State and local officials gathered Thursday morning to officially mark this new tier of this expanding statewide initiative that disposes of unused drugs safely and helps prevent young people from a path towards prescription drug addiction.

The New Jersey Attorney General’s Office along with the Division of Consumer Affairs started the initiative just about a year ago with three drop boxes at three police departments in the state and is now up to 27 locations.

Paramus is the first police department in the county to be involved in this initiative.

“It’s a great privilege for the Paramus Police Department to be asked to participate in what we believe is a tremendous worthwhile initiative,” said Paramus Police Chief Christopher Brock. The chief added he believes this will help law enforcement initiative to severely impact and reduce the availability of prescription drugs.

“Nationwide, more than 70 percent of people who abuse prescription drugs obtain them from friends or relatives,” said state Attorney General Jeffrey S. Chiesa. Aside from serving as a safe place where residents can dispose of their unused and expired medications 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, Project Medicine Drop is designed to reduce the exposure young people can have to such drugs which can lead to serious addiction, he explained.

Twenty-year old Donovan Allieri is living proof of what can happen when a young person becomes exposed to prescription drugs. In fact he is lucky to be alive. Allieri, of Boonton, shared his true story in the hopes he can keep others from taking the same path he did.

A three-star athlete in high school, Allieri started experimenting with some prescription drugs he’d find in family homes. The addiction got stronger after suffering an injury. That was when he “fell in love” with percosset.

“I didn’t think I had a problem,” he said adding that he tried both self-help and outside help but realizes now that he wasn’t putting the work into it.  The path he was on led him to a heroin addiction. Allieri says he is lucky to be alive, lucky to even be walking again. His  mother had found him convulsing on the floor of his bedroom, as he was slipping into a coma.

“It took me to be lying in a hospital bed for two months paralyzed from the waist down to realize it,” said Allieri. He says had those drugs he had been exposed to been in a drop box like the one newly unveiled, he would’ve been protected from it.

The new metal box, which resembles a postal drop box, sits inside the police department lobby. Paramus’ Eileen McDowell and Vera Lopresti were the first to officially christen the box by exposing their old medications.

Also playing an important role in the Project Medicine Box initiative is Covanta Energy, based in Morristown, a nationwide operator of energy-from-waste and renewable energy facility, which has agreed to safely destroy the drugs at no cost to the police department or NJ taxpayers, according to Chiesa.

“We offer the environmental advantages of no water pollution. Once it comes to us it’s gone,” said John G. Waffenschmidt, vice president of environmental sciences and community affairs, for Covanta.  The company has destroyed 410,000 pounds of unused drugs nationwide since 2010, he said.

The expansion of Project Medicine Box now means there is at least one drop box location in each county. For a full list of locations visit www.NJConsumeraffairs.gov/medrop.