ROCK SPRINGS – The Sweetwater County Sheriff’s Office and the Rock Springs Police Department are teaming up with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s National Drug Take-Back Initiative, an annual program that gives the public the opportunity to prevent prescription pill abuse and theft by ridding their homes of potentially dangerous expired, unused, and unwanted prescription drugs.
On Saturday, October 26, between 10:00 AM and 2:00 PM, people with medications for disposal can bring them to the Sheriff’s Office North Substation on Yellowstone Road north of the main fairgrounds entrance or the pharmacies at Smith’s on Foothill Drive and Albertson’s on Dewar Drive in Rock Springs, where deputies and city officers will be staffing special collection stations.
The service is free and anonymous. There are no forms or other paperwork and no questions asked. The program is limited to prescription drugs only; street drugs will not be accepted, and the public is asked not to bring in needles or sharps, pressurized canisters, thermometers, oxygen containers, or chemotherapy/radioactive substances.
Authorities said the initiative addresses a vital public safety and health issue. Medicines that languish in home cabinets are highly susceptible to diversion, misuse, and abuse. Rates of prescription drug abuse in the United States are very high, as are the numbers of accidental poisonings and overdoses due to these drugs. Flushing such medications down the toilet or throwing them in the trash both pose potential safety and health hazards.
