On Saturday, April 29th,
the Allegany County Spring Pill Drop Event was held in Cuba and Wellsville. The
event is held by coalition members of Partners for Prevention in Allegany
County (PPAC), which includes the Allegany Council on Alcoholism and Substance
Abuse Inc., (ACASA), the Allegany County Sheriff’s Office and the Cuba Police
Department.
This year the two pill drop
locations were at the Cuba Fire Department and the YMCA’s Healthy Kids’ Day at
the Alfred State College Wellsville campus. The purpose of the event is to get
unused or unwanted medications off our streets and out of the hands of
children. 68 community members participated, with over 100 pounds of
medications collected. The Sheriff’s Office will transport these medications to
secure location to properly dispose of them by incineration, which is the
recommended way to dispose of medications. Previous studies have found that flushing
them down the toilet can lead to medications being found in our streams and waterways.
PPAC would like to send out a
special “Thank You” to the volunteers that assisted at the pill drops, which
include: Cuba Pharmacy’s Alyssa Velez and Cuba Rite Aid’s Christie Fries, Deb
Miller of the Department of Social Services and Eric Strauser of Veteran’s
Affairs.
If you have medications you would
like to dispose of and you were unable to get to the pill drop locations, you
can also drop off medications at any of the six pill drop boxes that are
located throughout the county at: the Allegany County Sheriff’s Office, Alfred
State’s Campus Police, the Cuba Police Department, Fillmore Pharmacy, Jones
Memorial Hospital, and the Wellsville Police Department. The pill drop event and drop boxes are confidential and completely
anonymous. More information on the pill drop box locations can be found at www.ppaccentral.org/pill-drop-locations/.
For more information please visit
www.ppaccentral.org, if you would like
a pill drop event to be held in your community please email at ppac@alleganycouncil.org. The next
pill drop event will be held this Fall with locations and information to
follow.
