Woman’s Voice: The Lenawee Substance Abuse Prevention Coalition is a diverse group of dedicated community members united around the goal of reducing substance use in Lenawee County. LSAPC members work collaboratively to engage and educate the community in order to promote a healthy Lenawee.
Kathy Williams: I’m Kathy Williams. And with me on tonight’s program is Tim Kelly and Tim and I are talking again about the Prevention and Education subcommittee, part of Lenawee Substance Abuse Prevention Coalition, and Tim, we want to continue our discussion we had on October 4th about the Drug Take-Back Day that is going to be held October 23rd at ProMedica Hickman Hospital. You know, in April we said we had collected a significant amount of things that should not be in our homes or offices or our vehicles anymore. Or our barns, garages… You know, I mean, wherever we happen to stash things there, and then we forget about them. It’s a good way to just do a little quick clean-up.
Tim Kelly: Yeah. Yeah. The people kind of put things in places like your nightstands or even in your car and you forget about them. And this is the opportunity to, to collect them all up, you know, and it’s, it’s not just pills. It’s pills, it’s inhalers, it’s maybe ointments or topical things that you had, or the needles that you may have used for some type of injections that you or a person you care about may have had to have at one time. All those things can be brought out there on the 23rd and, and disposed of.
Kathy Williams: Well, and you know, we’ve talked before about that you know, getting rid of these things, of course helps protect your other family members and, and things like that. But the teenage statistic really surprised me.
Tim Kelly: Yeah. Yeah. You know, recently we did something that’s called the MiPHY. It’s a survey of students at schools, 9th and 11th graders. In that survey, 7% of the kids identified that they had taken prescription drugs that were not prescribed to them. And usually that’s through, you know, taking them out of somebody’s cupboard or, or getting them somehow through a family member’s prescription.
Kathy Williams: Right.
Tim Kelly: So yeah, the 7% is a lot.
Kathy Williams: That and I, yeah, that one really shocked me.
Tim Kelly: Yeah.
Kathy Williams: So, if that’s going on, you know, how many of the adults are also swapping out things that they shouldn’t be swapping out and it, and they may not even, you know, of course they’re not doing it intentionally to hurt anyone, but you don’t know what other people’s physical conditions are, how medications might mix incorrectly. And, you know, even over the counter drugs can be dangerous.
Tim Kelly: Right. The interactions between the drugs, obviously you want to ask your doctors, which ones work together and which don’t, but sometimes these expired drugs can be harmful to you as well if you try to mix them with something. So please dispose of them, contact a physician to find out the correct way to use them.
Kathy Williams: And it there are people listening that have questions on what kind of things they can bring, they can go to the DrugPreventionLenawee.com website, there’s lists there. I believe there’s even lists there of other places that they could take their disposable prescriptions and such on a regular basis. Of course, we want them to come October 23rd to our big Drug Take-Back event.
Tim Kelly: Yeah. Those, that day is a really good day for us to, you know, call attention to it and have it all brought in at one time and hopefully beat a record of our previous amounts that we’ve collected before. But really, throughout the year you should dispose of things when they become expired or they could become dangerous, but you can contact your law enforcement agencies in your community and they can direct you to a disposal site for any meds.
Kathy Williams: But we’re making this super simple.
Tim Kelly: Yeah.
Kathy Williams: Because all they have to do is drive through. They don’t even have to get out of their car.
Tim Kelly: Right.
Kathy Williams: They’re going to give them a goodie bag that’s going to have some cool things in it.
Tim Kelly: Yes.
Kathy Williams: They’ll have a chance to sign up for a little contest on WLEN’s website: just a short little survey to win some prizes and…
Tim Kelly: Yeah, that WLEN website that we encourage people to go there and do that quick survey just to let us know, you know, how things are, are going or what issues people have with the medication disposal. And I think last time a person won a $200 gift basket.
Kathy Williams: They did.
Tim Kelly: So there could be something really good out there for you.
Kathy Williams: Very wonderful prizes. You can also go on the WLEN website and there is a banner ad about the Drug Take-Back event that links you to appropriate information that you might need.
Tim Kelly: Yeah. And the other thing that is going to be available is some stuff through Facebook. Look for some maybe some live feeds from that Drug Prevention Lenawee site, and you can do things like Snapchat filters, things I’m not really good at but something…
Kathy Williams: Huge media presence.
Tim Kelly: Yes.
Kathy Williams: So yeah, we definitely want to encourage people: find out more about it, talk to your friends and neighbors, and it’s you know, it’s just a great community-type process.
Tim Kelly: Yeah. It really, you know, back in April when we did it, we had 500 pounds of drugs taken back that day. I think as a community we can beat that. We can, we can get more. It was a little rainy day that day. And, regardless, we can beat that. You don’t have to get out of the car.
Kathy Williams: Exactly.
Tim Kelly: That’s huge. Just drive through, hand it off. There’s people from the pharmacy school at Toledo that’s going to be right there to take stuff from you.
Kathy Williams: Well, and I think another important thing to make sure people realize is you can bring it in the original container. They are so good at making sure all your personal information is wiped out. They, you know, all of the pill dispensers and things like that. Anything that might have your name on it gets burned. I mean, it’s incinerated, it’s all overseen by the Sheriff’s department. So nothing walks away and I was amazed at how secure all of that part of the process went.
Tim Kelly: Yeah. There’s deputies onsite that are supervising things and they will give you Deterra bags. If you, if you don’t know what that is, it’s a bag that will… you can use when you’re at home to dissolve medicines and just dispose of them right in your regular trash. So those will be available there.
Kathy Williams: Yeah, we want to stop people from flushing things down the toilets, because that used to be the go-to. And so part of this is about protecting our environment.
Tim Kelly: Yes.
Kathy Williams: Whether it’s under the soil or people we’re looking at, so we want to protect them all.
Tim Kelly: Right.
Kathy Williams: Well, Tim, thanks so much for talking to us again. We hope that our listeners will participate in the Drug Take-Back event. Again, it is at ProMedica Hickman Hospital, October 23rd, from 10 until 2.
Tim Kelly: Thank you.
Kathy Williams: You’re welcome.
Woman’s Voice: Thank you for listening. This information has been provided by the Lenawee Substance Abuse Prevention Coalition. Supported by funding from the Health Resources and Services Administration. New messages air on the first and third Monday of each month at 6:15 p.m. You can listen to this program as a podcast under the audio tab on WLEN.com and listen and gather more information at DrugPreventionLenawee.com.
