Martha’s Vineyard police collect hundreds of prescription drugs

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On Saturday morning police departments around Martha’s Vineyard collected hundreds of vials of unwanted, unused, or expired prescription drugs for ultimate disposal as part of a nationwide Drug Enforcement Administration drug take back campaign.

Tisbury police officer Dustin Shaw, one of the coordinators of the event, said it was a great success in Tisbury.

“We collected approximately 350-400 prescriptions from Tisbury residents ranging from over-the-counter medications that were expired to large amounts of frequently abused narcotics such as Oxycontin, oxycodone, Percocets and Valium,” Mr. Shaw said in a letter to the editor published in today’s issue of The Times. “The Martha’s Vineyard community has an ever-growing prescription abuse problem, as does the entire country, and it was great to see these unused prescriptions out of households and off the street where they could be accessible by potential abusers or potentially dangerous if left in a family’s medicine cabinet.”

Edgartown Police detective Chris Dolby reported collecting approximately 220 prescription pill bottles and zip lock bags containing more than 1,000 pills. “The Edgartown Police Department would like to thank the DEA and officers Sean Slavin of Chilmark and Dustin Shaw of Tisbury for setting up the program,” Mr. Dolby said. “And our residents for participating and assisting the police department in our effort to keep these pills from getting into the wrong hands.”

Future collection efforts are planned. For more information on safe and secure means of disposing of prescription drugs contact police.