BAY MINETTE, Ala. – The Bay Minette Police Department collected prescription medications worth approximately $2,000 if sold on the street during the first national Take Back campaign, sponsored and organized by the Drug Enforcement Administration.

The one-day, nationwide even was aimed at removing prescription drugs no longer in use from households, drugs that often lead to abuse, injury or death.

“More than 70 percent of people who abuse prescription drugs get them from friends or family, often from the home medicine cabinet,” Gil Kerlikowske, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, stated in a press release.

Of children who abuse drugs, more than 50 percent began by taking medications they found at home, Bay Minette Lt. Ruffin Crook said in an earlier article.

In that article, Crook said the majority of drug crimes now are prescription drugs.

“A lot of kids we’re stopping now have Lortab in their pocket or some other drug. A lot of time, they don’t even know what they have,” he said.

He said that is an even more dangerous situation, as evidenced by more than one incident at Baldwin County High School recently.

According to BCHS school resource officer Ricky Colburn, more than once students have been taken to the hospital for taking pills of an unknown type.

“They don’t even know what they’re taking,” Colburn said.

According to the 2009 Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s National Survey on Drug Use and Health, more than 7 million Americans abuse prescription drugs. Additionally, an average of 2,500 teens a day use them for their first encounter with drugs, information from the Partnership for a Drug-Free America states.

The first Bay Minette Take Back campaign was held Sept. 25 and included CVS and North Baldwin Family pharmacies. Residents brought unused or old prescriptions to the pharmacies where police officers collected them. At the end of the four-hour collection, DEA agents sealed and collected the bags for incineration.

While Bay Minette’s campaign was not an overwhelming success, officers were pleased with what they took in, including numerous bottles of oxycodone, oxycontin. Lortab, Ritalin and more.

Nationally, more than 242,000 pounds of prescription medications were turned in at 4,094 collection sites in all 50 states, through the combined efforts of 2,992 state and local law enforcement agencies, according to a release from the U.S. Department of Justice Drug Enforcement Administration Office of Diversion Control.

Congress is working to pass a law that would “allow DEA to create a framework for a permanent solution for prescription drug disposal,” states a DEA release. “Currently there are no legal means to transfer possession of certain prescription drugs for disposal. Until permanent regulations are in place, however, DEA will continue to hold one-day take-back programs.”

The Take Back campaign is a combined effort of the Drug Enforcement Administration, Partnership for a Drug-Free America, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the National Association of Attorneys General, the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy, the Federation of State Medical Boards, the National District Attorneys Association and local and state law enforcement.