Clark County's Clean Sweep, Part 7
Wednesday, September 13th, 2017 -- 1:38 PM
-The Clark County UW-Extension Office, in partnership with several other county departments, is holding a Clean Sweep Event on September 29th.I spoke with Melissa Kono and Shawn Ganther about the Clean Sweep. Shawn explained the prescription drug take back aspect of the Clean Sweep.
"Well, for one, using a drop box, because we have 4 or 5 permanent locations throughout the county for people to actually dispose of their medications normally. And those are open, depending on the business hours, those are usually going to be open, like ours here at the Sheriff's Department is open 24/7. They can come in, safely dispose of medication so that way they're not flushing it and putting it into the water supply or just leaving expired medication in their cabinets."
"At a stand point for drug prevention, because of the opioid epidemic going on, it's also a way to clear out medicine cabinets; anything that could by potentially abused by someone other than yourself. This is still happening, although less frequently, where people would go to houses and they'd go in, ask to use the bathroom and then raid the medicine cabinet. If you've got stuff in there that's been sitting there for awhile, that's just inviting them to take it and misuse it. They have things like "pharm" parties or skittle parties. Things of that nature for teenage abuse and then, of course, leading to addiction."
"So, any way we can get these off the streets. And a lot of times when you talk to parents or grandparents, they say, 'well, my kid is not taking this.' And of course you can trust your child. But what about your child's friends that come over to the house? So, what we like to say is if you have it in your house and you're not using it, don't keep it for a rainy day medication. It's prescribed for a reason. Once you're done, dispose of it and dispose of it properly. Having this at clean sweep just adds another element to that. If you're already taking in a bunch of things to clean sweep, you have that extra element. Especially for people that don't know about the drop boxes yet. Or maybe they do, but they're not comfortable with dropping them off at the Sheriff's Department, you can bring them to clean sweep and we'll dispose of them in the same manner."
Coming up on Thursday, Shawn will explain the types of medications accepted at the event. And you must pre-register by September 15th for the Clean Sweep and you can do so by contacting the Clark County UW-Extension Office at 715-743-5121. If you don’t, you will be turned away. You can also find more information online, or by calling Extension, regarding the items accepted and the slight cost to some of the items collected. This event is only for Clark County residents and businesses and items will not be accepted beforehand. They will only be accepted on the 29th. The Clark County UW-Extension Office has the right to reject any items that do not meet the guidelines of the Clean Sweep event.
In Case You Missed It:
Part 1: http://cwbradio.com/news/?fn_mode=fullnews&fn_id=19663
Part 2: http://cwbradio.com/news/?fn_mode=fullnews&fn_id=19668
Part 3: http://cwbradio.com/news/?fn_mode=fullnews&fn_id=19673
Part 4: http://cwbradio.com/news/?fn_mode=fullnews&fn_id=19678
Part 5: http://cwbradio.com/news/index.php?p=news&fn_incl=1&fn_mode=fullnews&fn_id=19686
Part 6: http://cwbradio.com/news/index.php?p=news&fn_incl=1&fn_mode=fullnews&fn_id=19696
Feel free to contact us with questions and/or comments.