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No Questions Asked, Turn in Unused Prescription Drugs this Weekend

Amanda Plasencia/FLICKR
Last year more than 617,000 pounds of prescription drugs were seized and disposed of.

At 50 police departments across the state on Saturday, New Hampshire residents can safely dispose of expired and leftover prescriptions between the hours of 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. Police departments including Manchester, Ashland and Lancaster will be participating. 

Click here for the full list of locations.

This effort is part of theNational Prescription Drug Take Back Program. Last year more than 6,000 pounds of prescription drugs were collected and properly disposed of in New Hampshire and 617,000 pounds nationwide.

 Executive Director of the state’s Board of Pharmacy, Michael Dupuis, said the program is designed to prevent potent drugs from getting into the wrong hands as well as safely discard out-of-date and unsecured prescriptions from people’s homes.

“Medication you have now from a potency perspective is very different from what it will be in a number of years, it won’t be as active, it won’t be effective and most importantly it is no longer prescribed to you,” Dupuis said.

When dropping medications off, there will be no cost or names written down, Dupuis said. “Just drive up and drop them off – you just hand them right over, no questions asked. We just want to get them out of people’s medicine cabinets,” he said.

Needles, inhalers and illegal drugs will not be accepted. 

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