Photo Credit | Jade Johnson
Students, teachers and metro Atlantans alike can now ditch their drugs at campus police stations, should they feel so inclined.
The Medical Association of Georgia Foundation (MAG) recently introduced its “Think About It” campaign, a statewide initiative aiming to curb prescription drug abuse and addiction, to metro colleges, such as Georgia State, Kennesaw State and the University of West Georgia.
The project will plop down a few “prescription drug drop boxes” near university police stations so people with expired, unused or plainly unwanted medicine can toss it in a controlled, anonymous and environmentally friendly manner. (Almost 97 percent of Georgia counties have some sort of drug drop box program.)
“Atlanta, as any large city, has a rampant drug epidemic,” said Dallas Gay, co-chair of MAG’s Think About It campaign. “We’re trying to combat that epidemic.”
Gay told The Signal that a substantial amount of the nation’s drug overdose-related deaths are “legal or illegal opiate-induced deaths.”
“Heroin has seen a dramatic increase in the past five years,” he said. “The CDC says that about 80 percent of people who end up on heroin started with prescription drugs; somebody’s prescription drugs.”
And a vast majority of those drugs, he said, citing the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), are “coming from family and friends.” “The more we can take out of the stream [of distribution], the more we reduce the risk of abuse.”
“Having drop boxes helps to prevent individuals from having access to the medications of others,” said Jill Lee-Barber, senior director of psychological and health services at Georgia State.
And according to Chief Carlton Mullis of Georgia State University Police Department (GSUPD), the drop box project is no skin off the force’s teeth. GSUPD is tasked with hauling the collected pills and tabs to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation for disposal.
“It’s no cost to us [or the school], aside from the little time it takes us to take the drugs to GBI, where it’s all incinerated,” Mullis said.
And just how they dump the drugs, Gay said, is very important.
“If you toss a bottle of pills in the trash can, and someone rifles through that trash, you’ve not done your job,” he said. “You’ve allowed those drugs to be diverted. But if you put ‘em in a drop box, they’re gone.”
Since the drop boxes, mailbox-looking metal traps for drug ditching, are posted up close to police stations, Mullis said, there’s not much risk of theft.
“You don’t want a drug box sitting out in the open,” he said. “You can’t just put it on the street corner. Someone would just break into it and steal.”
Nick Sheridan, a Georgia State graphic design major, said he sees the potential for tomfoolery, adding, “A big box of unmarked pills on campus could bring a lot of weirdness.”
He said he thinks MAG’s program brings a sensitive topic, drug abuse, into too public a venue — the front yard of the police. Plus, Sheridan said, it’s tough to separate college kids from their drugs.
“I know some friends that should throw away their drugs,” he said, “but probably none that actually will. Too many young people are exposed too easily to pharmaceutical drugs. But at the end of the day, those pills are money, whether or not you want to take them. It costs money to get them, and once you have them, it’s easy just to sell them.”
Sheridan said he doubts the drop box program will draw big crowds of drug-yielding students, but Mullis said it only takes a small sample to make this endeavor worthwhile.
“If this takes just a few drugs off of people who don’t need ‘em, it’s all worth it,” he said.
