Saturday is National Drug Take Back Day. Here's where you can dispose of old and unused medications in the Pittsburgh area.
Take a moment to think about this: what medications do you have right now in your home that you don't need or that are past their expiration date?
Perhaps it could be something like pain pills that you got prescribed after that minor procedure, but you never used them.
This weekend is the time to get rid of them, as Saturday is National Drug Take Back Day. Call it spring cleaning light because there's no heavy lifting or cleansing, just a culling of things that could be harmful.
Why get rid of expired and unused drugs?
"You know, [a lot] of us have children, grandchildren, we don't want anybody to get harmed by these," said Chief Sean Frank of the Shaler Police Department. "There are some very potent pain medications that people take, and we just don't want them getting into the wrong hands."
It's not just those little hands, they might be harmful in your own hands.
"There are some medications that become more potent, and they may actually interact with your body or with your other medications," said Dr. Neha Vyas of the Cleveland Clinic.
Dr. Vyas said if they have expired, the efficacy of the medications may actually be less than when they were originally prescribed.
Don't flush old medications
That said, don't flush them down the toilet like your parents might have done back in the day.
"We don't want to do that," Chief Frank said. "We don't want to introduce that into the water system, even though there are some systems that can purify that. We just don't want to add anything more to it."
Where to get rid of expired and unused medicine
That is why police departments have been providing you with a place to take your drugs for years.
"Drop it in, just like a mailbox," Chief Frank said. "You open it up, drop it in, and it's gone. We just box it up and send it for incineration. We've had a box since 2016, and we've had over 5,000 pounds of medications that have been discarded in a proper way."
For tomorrow's take-back day, Chief Frank said they'll be next to the Shaler Middle School at the Shaler Library.
"It's a real simple drive-through," he said. "You just pull up in your car, we have a tent, we have the boxes, you just drop it in the box, and you can go on your way."
They'll be there from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. on Saturday, but Shaler is far from alone with this. There are collection points all over the city, and you can find those sites at this link.
One last thing: when it comes to privacy, it's recommended that you remove the labels from the bottle or mark out any personal information with something like a Sharpie. If you don't want to take that risk, you can also pour the pills into a Ziplock bag and take that to the drop-off and dispose of the bottles separately.
