Saturday is the day to clear out your medicine cabinets and drawers of prescription medicines that you no longer need.
The annual “National Prescription Drug Take Back Day” is scheduled to run from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, hosted locally by the Malheur County Drug Free Communities Coalition and the Malheur County Sheriff’s Office.
The drugs will be collected in the parking lot at the Four Rivers Cultural Center in Ontario.
People are urged to remove labels from containers or put the medications in a plastic bag.
There are limits, though. Organizers say they can’t take intravenous solutions, injectables, inhalers, syringes, of chemotherapy medications.
The annual event, created by the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, is intended to get out of circulation medicines that can be abused. The agency said surveys show that misused prescription drugs are usually obtained from relatives or friends – and often from the home medicine chest. The abuse can lead to addiction, overdoses and death.
The sheriff’s office took in 120 prescription medications at last year’s event.