By Rhys Baker

The Clay Counts Coalition will participate in the National Drug Take Back on Wednesday, October 23rd. Sponsored by the National Drug Enforcement Administration, the event encourages people to inspect their medicine cabinets. Clay Counts Community mobilizer Lori Martin agrees adding fall is not just a time to clean out your closets and swap out your summer clothes for sweaters. “It is also a time to pull the old medicine chest off the shelf and go through it and see if there’s anything that’s expired and might need a safe place to dispose of.  You don’t want just to take those pills and medications and flush them down the toilet because that pollutes our groundwater, and it’s not safe for the environment or people. Then what else are you going to do? You can’t toss it in the trash; who knows what hands the medications will end up in.”

In addition to expired over-the-counter or prescription medications, Martin says the coalition will accept almost anything as the coalition works toward their mission to promote social, physical, and mental well-being for residents of Clay County while emphasizing the reduction of substance use, “This may be a way for you to start living a little cleaner if in fact, you might be using some of those drugs and you’re trying to wean yourself off of them. They’re not there to tempt you if you get them out of the house. We will take anything, no judgments. We just put them in the bag.

In 2023, over 46-hundred take back sites across the nation collected 300 tons of unused or expired medications. The Drug Take Back event will be held from 11 a-m to 3 p-m at the Clay County Health Department, 820 Spellman Circle.