#Middlebury #Police #DrugDrop
By MARJORIE NEEDHAM
Middlebury Police Chief Fran Dabbo stands beside the new drug drop box in the Middlebury Police Station lobby. It provides a convenient place for residents to drop off leftover or expired medications. (Marjorie Needham photo)
Middlebury residents no longer have to wait for a special medication collection day; they can drop unwanted medications into the new drug drop box in the lobby of the police station on Southford Road. Middlebury Police Chief Fran Dabbo said the department obtained the drop box through a grant from CVS.
Medications can be dropped off 24 hours a day. Dabbo noted liquids and needles cannot be put in the box. But what can be put in there is not limited to prescription pills, patches, medications and ointments; you also can drop off over-the-counter drugs, vitamins, samples and pet medications.
Dabbo said, “The drop box is good because it gets medicine out of the medicine cabinet.” He cautioned residents, “Don’t leave them lying around. It gives them a chance to be misused.”
Jennifer Dewitt, executive director of the Central Naugatuck Valley Regional Action Council, said misuse of prescription drugs is more common than many people realize. And many people have these drugs sitting in their medicine cabinet. At a recent training, she asked attendees to raise their hands if they have a medicine in their cabinet that they no longer use. “Almost everyone raised their hand,” she said. “We just don’t clean out our medicine cabinets. I kept my medication (locked up) for six months in case my back flared up. I kept it ‘just in case.’ A lot of people do that.”
Dewitt referred us to a presentation by Dr. Susan Wolfe of the Connecticut Department of Mental Health and Addiction that is full of statistics on drug misuse. It lists sources of misused pain relievers in 2015 as 40.5 percent free from a friend or relative, 34 percent from a prescription from one doctor, and 13.2 percent bought/stole from a friend or relative. It also shows illicit drug use among persons 12 and older: 6.4 million in a 30-day period misused prescription medications – sedatives, stimulants, tranquilizers or pain relievers – with the largest number, 3.8 million, misusing pain relievers.
What some may find even scarier is the Centers for Disease Control says past misuse of prescription opioids is the strongest (our emphasis) risk factor for heroin initiation and use.
While most people don’t have a lot of potentially abusable prescription medications, Dewitt said those most commonly found in the medicine cabinet are Tylenol with codeine, Klonopin, Vicodin, Oxycodone, Percodan and Percoset. The sleep medications Tramadol and Ambien also can be abused. And stimulants such as Ritalin, Adderall and Concerta are often abused by college students. While not all these drugs are opioids, the users are still taking medications not legally prescribed for them and/or are not taking them in an appropriate way.
When it comes to their medicine cabinet, the average person may not even notice someone is taking their pills. Dewitt said when you set a bottle of 50 Altoids next to a bottle with 47 Altoids, it’s unlikely you will notice three are missing from one of the bottles.
Who takes a few pills at a time? Dewitt said it could be anyone who comes to your house. It could be anyone you know; there’s not a particular look to the person who does this. She said it could be someone looking to deal as easily as it could be relatives, a boyfriend, a girlfriend, even law enforcement officers. Last year, Realtors were made aware this could be a problem at open houses.
She said teens are particularly vulnerable. “They are risk-takers by nature. The initial lure of prescription medications is they have a legitimate use. They were prescribed by a doctor, manufactured in a lab and teens think of them as not as dangerous as heroin or fentanyl, ecstasy or molly, which have who knows what in them.”
Dewitt’s advice to us: “Abusable medications should not be in a medicine cabinet. They should be locked up somewhere safe.” And, of course, they should be taken to a drug drop box as soon as they are no longer needed.
In addition to the Middlebury Police Department, readers will find drop boxes at Connecticut State Police barracks in Southbury, Bethany and Litchfield. Find more information online at cnvrac.com, drugfree.com and ct.gov/dmhas/site/default.asp.
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