SALINE COUNTY — Law enforcement officers around the state collected unused prescription and over-the-counter drugs during the second National Drug Take Back Day on Saturday.
In Saline County, where two previous drug-collection events had taken in hundreds of pounds of pills, five law enforcement agencies in the county took in more than 700 pounds of prescription drugs in Operation Medicine Cabinet III.
“It was a huge success,” said Benton Police Chief Kirk Lane, who coordinated the event among the Alexander, Benton, Bryant and Haskell police departments and the Saline County Sheriff’s Office. “The numbers are almost 200 pounds more than last year.”
Saline County residents handed over 734 pounds of prescription drugs at drop-off locations around the county, according to a report issued Monday by the Benton Police Department. During the first drug take-back event in 2010, more than 52,000 pills were collected in Saline County. During the second event in September, more than 540 pounds of prescription drugs were received by police officers and sheriff deputies in Saline County.
“The collections continue to go up as we do more education and find new avenues to get the word out,” said Lt. Kevin Russell of the Benton Police Department. “Using Facebook was extremely helpful in reaching young people. I was posting something every day.”
Russell said the county’s pharmacies, churches and health care organizations cooperated in urging residents to go through their medicine cabinets and clean out old, unused prescription drugs in an effort to protect them from the possibility of theft or drug abuse.
“Our children do not have to meet an unknown drug dealer on a street corner to get drugs,” said Lt. James “Corky” Martin of the Garland County Sheriff’s Department.
Sheriff’s Department deputies collected drugs from residents in the department’s parking lot on Ouachita Avenue in Hot Springs on Saturday.
“It is important to note that [occurrences of drug theft and abuse] are not isolated to certain areas, schools or groups of youth,” Martin said. “This growing problem is in every community, school, neighborhood, social and ethnic group.”
A report about how many pills were taken in Saturday by Garland County deputies was not available, but during an event held Sept. 25, around 200,000 pills were collected, Martin said.
The Arkadelphia Police Department collected around 33 pounds of prescription and over-the-counter drugs Saturday.
“That is about half of what we got the time before,” Arkadelphia Police Chief Al Harris said. “The first event cleaned up a lot of the old prescription drugs people were keeping at home.”
Drugs were turned in by residents at the Arkadelphia Parks and Recreation Center at Feaster Park.
“This time we were outside in the parking lot, and people could just drive by and drop them off,” Harris said. “The next time we do this, we will do it that way again.”
According to a draft report from the Arkansas Prevention Needs Assessment for 2010, the percentage of Arkansas youth abusing prescription drugs dropped from 12.1 percent to 10.1 percent in the past year.
Benton Chief Lane credits the emphasis on drug take-back programs for helping that number to decline. However, he said, there is more work to be done.
“While we achieved a great milestone,” Lane said, “Saturday night we lost a resident to what appears to be an overdose-related death. We must continue to educate and keep this initiative working to save lives.”