By Andria Simmons
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
JONESBORO, Ga. — Twelve-year-old Taylor Miles knows where her mom keeps the old painkillers that were prescribed when her mother broke a leg.
Fortunately, they’re in a locked cabinet that she and her 10-year-old sister can’t access.
“My sister is kind of nosy, but she knows not to touch any medicine or anything,” Taylor said with a giggle.
After hearing about the dangers of expired or unused prescription drugs from law enforcement officers and public health officials on Wednesday, Taylor and other seventh-graders at M.D. Roberts Middle School in Jonesboro were headed home to tell their parents to toss out old medications.
Dozens of sites statewide will participate in the first National Prescription Drug Take-Back Day from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday. After collecting unwanted medicines, authorities will incinerate them.
Flushing old medicine is not recommended because it can pollute, and throwing it in the trash could make powerful pharmaceuticals accessible to those who might pick through the trash.
If you can’t make it to a collection site Saturday, Rodney Benson, special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration office in Atlanta, recommends sealing old prescription pills in a plastic bag filled with cat litter or coffee grounds before tossing them in the trash.
Nationally, more than 6 million people admitted using prescription drugs for non-medical purposes in a 2008 survey by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. That’s more than all other illicit drugs combined except marijuana, Benson said.
In the past decade, there has been a 400 percent increase in the proportion of Americans treated for prescription painkiller abuse, according to figures from SAMHSA.
The take-back initiative is aimed at reducing pill theft and abuse. To raise awareness about the event, DEA officials partnered with the Clayton County Sheriff’s Office and Clayton County Public Schools to host a preview event at the middle school. Seventh-graders shrieked in delight when an officer landed a helicopter on the field behind their school, kicking up dried grass and dust. They jumped in surprise when masked agents in an armored vehicle set off a concussion grenade as they demonstrated an arrest of a man driving a sport-utility vehicle.
Fred Stephens, a special agent for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, told the middle schoolers that law enforcement officers in Georgia report seeing an increase in prescription drug abuse, as well as pill-sharing and illegal distribution of pharmaceuticals.
In 2009, there were 584 deaths in Georgia involving an overdose of prescription drugs or a combination of prescription and illicit drugs. That tally did not include overdose deaths reported in metro Atlanta counties with their own medical examiner’s offices (Cobb, DeKalb, Fulton, Gwinnett, Hall, Henry and Rockdale counties), Stephens said. Overdose statistics from those counties were not immediately available Wednesday.
“These prescription medications are not different than a cop gun,” Stephens said. “They are just as deadly.”
No one needed to convince Winnie Thomas, a substitute teacher who plucked from her purse a laminated card with a photograph of her niece printed on it. The dates March 29, 1989 --- June 22, 2008 were emblazoned across the top. Thomas said her niece, Erin Elton, 19, of Mays Landing, N.J, went to sleep after taking a doctor-prescribed dose of sleep medication two years ago and never woke up.
“These drugs are powerful, and kids don’t get that,” Thomas said. “Just because they are prescriptions doesn’t mean they are safe.”
Copyright 2010 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution