Annual local drug take back day set for Saturday

Saturday, the Substance Abuse and Misuse Coalition of Hill and Blaine County, in partnership with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency and the Hill and Blaine County DUI Task Forces, will be running the annual drug take back day from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Havre Police Department and Blaine County Sheriff’s Office.

Havre Encourages Long-Range Prevention — HELP — Committee and Boys & Girls Club of the Hi-Line Prevention Specialist and Substance Abuse And Misuse Coalition Representative Susan Brurud said the DEA does a drug take back day like this every year to get families across the U.S. to find all the expired or unused prescription medications in their homes so they can be disposed of safely and anonymously.

“The intention of drug take back day is to, one, inform families and parents and care givers about the danger of legal drugs and the effects they can have on children, and two, where they can go to dispose of these in a safe way,” she said.

Brurud said having prescription medication that has expired or is no longer being used in the medicine cabinet will increase the chances that young people in the house may use it either accidentally or intentionally, which can have tragic results especially in the case of opioids, hence this year’s theme, “Don’t Be the Dealer.”

“Say someone has gone to get their wisdom teeth pulled and you have a narcotic in your cabinet and it’s just sitting there because you never took it,” she said. “It needs to be disposed of safely.”

She said having these drugs around can lead to accidental poisonings and overdoses which in turn increases calls to poison control centers and unfortunately deaths.

“We just don’t want unused prescription drugs finding their way into the wrong hands because it can have tragic results,” she said.

Brurud said exposure to dangerous drugs often is purely accidental with young children taking their parent’s medicine not to abuse it but just because they read the label and think it’s okay for them to use because they think they’re having a similar problem, not knowing how dangerous that can be.

She said that, sometimes, young people will take their parent or caregivers prescription drugs specifically to abuse either due to simple bad decision making or due to an addiction.

Brurud said the reason these take back days exist is because disposing of drugs safely requires that they be deactivated, usually be putting them in water.

She said flushing drugs down the toilet is not safe as it can result in drug residue getting into the water supply if enough people in an area do it.

Because of that, she said, the issue the day hopes to address is one of public safety as well as personal safety given that disposing of these drugs safely usually can’t be done by people who haven’t been trained to do it.

Brurud said participation in the take back day nationwide has been encouraging, with 4,800 law enforcement facilities joining the effort, which has collected 441.5 tons of prescription drugs in 2019 and 6,350 tons since 2010.

She said she wanted to stress that even though the event itself is an annual affair there are ways people can dispose of drugs safely any time of year.

She said in Hill and Blaine counties specifically there are safe medication disposal sites that people can use to get rid of their drugs, including over-the-counter drugs like Nyquil.

In Havre, Bullhook Community Health Center’s pharmacy has one, as well as the pharmacies in Walmart and Gary and Leo’s as well as one in the Havre Police Station.

Brurud said the HELP Committee also has special bags that can be used to safely deactivate drugs that they provide free of charge provided they still have them in stock.

She said she’s hoping that with so many people stuck at home during the pandemic they will have time to go through their cabinets and participate in the drug take back day, and if not, to get the substances out of their houses as soon as they are able.