Law enforcement groups across the commonwealth are urging residents to do away with their unused and expired prescription medications.
Kentucky now has nearly 150 permanent prescription drug disposal locations throughout the state, housed at police and sheriff's departments. The program is aimed at getting old prescription drugs out of medicine cabinets, where they can be stolen or discovered by children.
Scott Ingram, a narcotics detective with the Daviess County Sheriff's Department, says his office and the Owensboro Police Department gathered a combined half-a-ton of prescription pills last year through the program.
"A lot of kids will get these items from their parent's or grandparent's medicine cabinets, and that's the biggest thing that helps us," Ingram told WKU Public Radio. "When people like that have a place to drop those pills off, it cuts down a lot where kids have easy access to prescription drugs."
Ingram says the pills gathered in Daviess County are taken to an incinerator in Indianapolis to be destroyed.
The Bowling Green Police Department collects about 100 pounds of old prescription pills a month through the program.
"We've been able to take out all of the plastic pill bottles that you would receive from a pharmacy, and we give those to the Humane Society because they use those whenever somebody adopts an animal. They put animal medications in those bottles after they clean them and take the labels off. So that's another good positive that comes from this program," said Bowling Green Police Officer Ronnie Ward.
You can find a link to a map that lists the pill disposal locations in each Kentucky county here.
