By STEVEN CALHOUN/Staff Writer

The Clanton Police Department will participate in National Prescription Drug Take-Back Day on April 29 at CVS Pharmacy from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

The program is conducted in cooperation with the Drug Enforcement Administration and aims to safely and responsibly dispose of prescription drugs, while also educating the public about the potential for abuse of medications.

According to a press release, the DEA received more than 366 tons of prescriptions drugs at almost 5,200 sites across the country last year. The release stated that studies show a majority of abused prescription drugs are obtained from family and friends or the home medicine cabinet.

“Maybe they’ve had a family member that’s passed away or something and they just have all these medications they don’t know what to do with, and they don’t want them in their house. It allows citizens to turn in [those prescription] drugs,” Chief Keith Maddox said.

“That’s a good thing, because everybody wonders what to do with them when somebody passes away. For a while, people would just flush them down the toilet,” Maddox said. “Well, that’s probably starting to get in our water system and that’s not a good thing.”

According to Maddox, the CPD will hand over the drugs to the DEA, which will incinerate the medications to safely dispose of them.