Crime & Safety

Community Supports UMPD Drug Take-Back Event

The Upper Moreland Police Department participated in the bi-annual Drug Take-Back Day to keep unused prescriptions from hitting the streets.

The Upper Moreland Police Department (UMPD) again received much community support in its participation of the National Prescription Drug Take-Back Day, April 28.

The Drug Enforcement Administration organizes the bi-annual event. Locally, the Drug Take-Back Day, as it’s also known, took place from 10 a.m. – 2 p.m. at the Giant Food Store in Willow Grove, who is a local partner of the event with the UMPD.

Participants of the Drug Take-Back day would simply stop by the UMPD table and place their unused prescriptions into one of the marked bins, no questions asked.  

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“We’re trying to avoid the diversion of medication from off the streets,” Todd Smith, UMPD Field Training officer, explained. “We’re trying to keep them from becoming street drugs.”

Assisting the UMPD at this event, as well as the one in September, were Pharmacy students of Temple University. The students, Ji Park, Li He and Jason DeWitt, helped direct participants to the UMPD table, as well as pass out information on the importance of safe disposal.

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“I know at my pharmacy, a lot of people come in to ask how to dispose of their prescriptions safely,” He, who works at a Philadelphia pharmacy, said.

According to DeWitt, prescription users, aware of the dangers of keeping their medicine at home, will often try to dispose their prescriptions themselves.

“A lot of people just flush them down the toilet, and that’s not good for the environment,” DeWitt said. “We’re trying to educate people and increase awareness.

In regards to potential issues of privacy, several participants of the Drug Take-Back event informed the UMPD representatives that they had either scratched off or blacked-out with marker from their personal identification from the medication containers.

According to UMPD Community Service Responder Tina McGuckin, the UMPD does not keep count of who or how many people participate in the event. However, she noted that this year’s unused prescription yield is either en par or more than last year’s.

At the April 2012 Drug Take-Back day, McGuckin said that at least 91-pounds of unused prescription medication was weighed.

According to the DEA website, more than 2-million pounds (1,018 tons) of prescription medications were collected in the last five years of the nationwide event.

“It means that people are thinking about our Earth, and not only the safety of the water, it’s also getting the pills out of the hands of potential drug abusers,” McGuckin said.


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