PRINCETON, WV (WOAY) – Community Connections in Mercer County is soon going to offer drug disposal kits.
Drug disposal kits allow people to get rid of unneeded prescription drugs in a safe and hassle-free way. According to County Commissioner and Community Connections Executive Director Greg Puckett, these packets are easy enough for anyone to use.
“It’s a charcoal packet, you take 40 or 50 of the pills that are unused and unwanted at home, put those in, put a bit of water, zip it, shake it up, throw it away. That way it’s gonna dissolve and it makes those meds virtually unusable to the person they could potentially be a harm for in their home,” Puckett said.
Community Connections ordered the packets from grant money they received and are expecting to receive enough to hand to many local organizations like senior centers, funeral homes, and anywhere else that might often need to dispose of unneeded medications.
“We’re gonna have probably over a thousand of these packets locally. We’re gonna work with multiple counties in Southern West Virginia. So hopefully those community coalitions in Southern West Virginia will have those and they’ll be able to get them out to where they need to go.”
And according to Princeton Police Chief Tim Gray, the disposal kits are a great way to prevent issues involving dangerous prescription drugs before they happen.
“The majority of our burglaries and B&E’s are drug-related, and if the public were able to get their hands on one of these disposable bags they could take the medications that they’re not using and they don’t need any longer and destroy them,” Gray said.
As well, the kits will keep the drugs from getting into the hands of people that shouldn’t have them, especially children.
“This is also a good way to keep the drugs out of the hands of the children. Because kids are gonna be kids, and if they get their hands on something the first thing is they just put it in their mouth.”
According to Community Connections, this isn’t the first time they’ve offered these drug disposal kits to the community, and they’ve previously seen great success with them.
The kits are expected to become available sometime within the next few weeks.
