Bath County Hosts Drug Take Back Day Saturday July 16th

Mitchelltown, Va – The Bath County Sheriff’s Office and Bath Community Hospital have been working to develop a program that will help residents safely and legally remove unused or expired medications from their homes. The event will take place on Saturday, July 16th and Sheriff Larry Norfleet explains.

“This is a drug take-back program that has been a year in the planning” says Norfleet. “The hours are going to be between 9 am and 12 noon; the location is going to be at the Bath Rehab and Wellness Center located in Mitchelltown. And this is designed to take back used medication that someone is not taking.”

Norfleet discusses the importance of the program from the perspective of the Sheriff’s Office.

“One of the reasons that we are doing this is because our young people are being addicted to prescription medication” he says. “Most locations that they get it or the most famous location for getting it is the medicine cabinet from their parents or grandparents. So we wanted to get these medications out, we want to dispose of them properly where they won’t affect the groundwater and things of that nature and the environment.”

Pat Foutz, Clinical Supervisor at Bath Community Hospital, mentions that there has not been a way previously to deal with this situation.

“The other thing is that we get phone calls many times from patients about, what do we do with mom’s old medicines, what do we do with my dad’s medicines’ if they’ve passed away” says Foultz. “At this point we really had no way to guide them.”

There are also important medical reasons to not keep old medicines around the house, according to Kyna Moore, the hospital’s Director of Nursing.

“One of the concerns about keeping old medicines is so often times we do that because we think we might need it down the road” says Moore. “There are some medicines that, when they expire, they are not good for you; some vitamins, some antibiotics, and some different medicine can actually create some issues with your kidneys or your liver if they are expired and you continue to take them.”

Moore also cites problems with medication labels.

“The second thing that happens is we’ll get a medicine that is labeled with our generic name and a medicine labeled with our brand name so then we’ll end up taking two medicines that are the same thing and that can absolutely create some havoc in our body” she says.

Norfleet, Foutz, Moore, and many volunteers from both law enforcement and the hospital have worked hard to make Drug Take Back Day an easy-to-do-process for individuals who wish to bring items in.

“Mark your name off of it” says Foultz. “We’d like to leave the medication name and the strength on that because if it’s not identified we have to go and use a program online to identify each medication that comes through.”

The bottom line, according to Bath County Sheriff Larry Norfleet is keeping unused and expired medications out of children’s hands and off the street.

“If this program will only save one child, it will be a great success” says Norfleet.

The Bath County Drug Take Back will occur on Saturday, July 16th, from the hours of 9 am until noon. The location is the Rehab and Wellness Center in Mitchelltown.