Most people start to collect old medications, unfinished or expired. These drugs collect at the back of medicine cabinets cluttering it up; however, many people may not know about the drug takeback day to rid oneself of those pesky pills. On October 24, the local sheriff’s office will be participating in a nation-wide drug takeback day. The event will allow locals to drop off those extra medicines to be disposed of, for free. The event will occur between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. Any drop offs are anonymous and there will be no questions asked. The event will follow COVID-19 protection guidelines and regulations to protect anyone who participates.

The event is part of the DEA’s National Drug Take-Back program. Sanders County has been participating in the event for five years and has gotten rid of hundreds of pounds of drugs that could have made their way into the wrong hands. According to the Sheriff’s office and the DEA, the event, nation-wide, has turned in almost 883,000 pounds of drugs last fall and 6,350 tons since the start of the initiative, in 2010. The event will take place in nearly 6,300 sites operated by the DEA and 5,000 more operated by local law enforcement agencies.

As these useless medications sit unused, the likelihood of them being taken by the wrong person, such as being stolen or being taken by a young child, increases. “More often than not victims are senior citizens,” said Lynn Lanzoni, with the Sanders County Sheriff’s Office. Lanzoni has been working law enforcement for years and started with a drug sniffing dog for the county in 2015. That year he was paired up with max, a retriever with a well-trained nose. The two trained to work together and have acted as ambassadors and real assets to the communities in which they live, serve and protect. Lanzoni says that “people who aren’t fully employed or in difficult financial positions” will often turn to using drugs or stealing them. According to Lanzoni, if the drugs are dropped off or disposed of properly, then they are “not available, out of the house, and then they won’t be a temptation for someone else to use.”

The Sanders County Sheriff’s Office participates in two such events throughout the year; one like this in the fall and one in the spring. For those interested, there are drop boxes year-round at the Sheriff’s office and at the family pharmacy in Thompson Falls. There are also 11,000 authorized collection points available year-round across the nation. For more information on these and more, interested parties can visit the DEA’s year-round collection site locator. For a guide to proper disposal, the sites: https://www.fda.goviconsumers/consumer-updates/where-and-how-dispose-unused-medicines and http://www.DEATakeback.com can also be visited.