Prescription Drug Take Back Hauls in 2,700 Pounds of Meds in OC

We previously reported Nadya Suleman hauled in $2,600 at her Saturday garage sale in La Habra.

The same day, local law enforcement agencies collected prescription drugs voluntarily given up residents.

If cops got a dollar for each pound of medicine they took in, they would have beat Octomom.
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Orange County law enforcement agencies collected more than 2,700
pounds of prescription medicine in the national Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) effort.

Illustration by Jay Brockman

The Irvine, Anaheim, Placentia, La Palma, Garden Grove and Laguna Beach police departments and the Orange County Sheriff's Department hosted
collection sites over the weekends. So did agencies in Ventura, Riverside, Los Angeles,
Santa Barbara, San Bernardino and San Luis Obispo counties. The Southern California region collected a combined 8,190 pounds of meds.

The goal was to keep potentially dangerous expired,
unused, and unwanted prescription drugs off the streets or into storm drains, where it can eventually pollute the ocean and make fish, marine mammals and human swimmers sick.

No questions were asked of people who dropped off bottles at 3,600 locations nationwide. The DEA said the first-ever initiative was necessary because rates of prescription
drug abuse in the U.S. are increasing at alarming rates, as are the
number of accidental poisonings and overdoses due to these drugs.

“The nationwide results from DEA's first-ever nationwide prescription
drug 'Take-Back' campaign will still not be known for a few days,” informs a statement the DEA issued Wednesday.
“However, early indications are that the initiative was an overwhelming
success.”

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