VERONA -- Ramona Carver came to Turning Stone Casino & Resort with a small bag of unneeded, old prescription drugs she found lying around her house.
Carver brought the bag to a prescription drug takeback event the Oneida Nation and DEA teamed up on. She said wanted to be sure the potentially dangerous medication wouldn't get into the wrong hands.
"So I went through my closet and picked out those things that were sitting around for the last couple years just taking up space," said Carver.
Saturday is National Prescription Drug Takeback day and there will be locations all around Central New York that will dispose of old medication. The Oneida Nation's site will be open Saturday from 10am to 2pm. It will be located behind the Events Center at Turning Stone.
At their last event, the DEA and the Oneida Nation took in more than four hundred pounds of unwanted drugs.
The DEA incinerates them -- a safer method of disposal than flushing them down the drain or in the trash.
"Flushing them down a toilet or grinding them up and putting them in your garbage those aren't good ideas because they end up in a landfill and in our water supply," said Chief Joe Smith from the Oneida Indian Nation Police.
Prescription drug abuse has been a growing problem in the U.S. for years. Unwanted medication can clutter up a medicine cabinet but it can also be a target for thieves.
"Sometimes us older people, we don't realize or we're not aware of what the kids are looking for and what they can do with them," said Carver.
If you can't make it to a prescription drug takeback site, your pharmacist should be able to help you find a way to dispose of unwanted drugs.
