20 May 2009
On January 17 and 24 of this year, the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office conducted Operation Medicine Cabinet. The purpose of this operation was to increase public awareness of pharmaceutical diversion as well as collecting and destroying outdated or unneeded prescription drugs. Many people do not want to flush or throw away unneeded medications because these methods create a threat to our water system. Current federal regulations only allow law enforcement to receive controlled substances, which creates many problems in national drug buyback programs. The Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office realizes the need for our agency to partner with other organizations to conduct these types of operations.
During our Operation Medicine Cabinet in January, we collected 61,735 pills and issued 275 gift cards ($5 gift cards provided by CVS and Walgreens). We believe the operation was a tremendous success, judged not only by the amount of prescription drugs we took, but by the many expressions of appreciation from the public, many of whom told us that they did not know what to do with their unwanted prescription drugs.
We are conducting Operation Medicine Cabinet again on May 30, 2009 from 9:00 am to 4:00 pm at the Boca Raton Town Center Mall (by the main entrance off Glades in the north parking lot), as well as at other locations throughout the county.
Our current sponsors are Palm Beach County Fire Rescue, Aegis Laboratories, CVS Pharmacy, Walgreens, Walmart, Palm Beach County Substance Abuse Coalition, Simon Properties and Palm Beach Atlantic University. Pharmaceutical Agents will be on hand to give out gift cards. The Palm Beach Atlantic School of Pharmacology will assign students to assist the agents in counting the medications that are turned in. In addition, the Boca Raton Police Department will be providing additional manpower at this event.
Captain James K. Durr, Narcotics Division, PBSO
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