Are Expires Made? Here’s Where to Take Them in Steele County

Many of us have these in our medicine cabinets. Expired, unused, or unnecessary prescription drugs. Don’t throw them in the trash. Do not flush them down the toilet. Take them to the box. The Steel County Safe and Drug Free Coalition partners with Steel County law enforcement to provide a safe and fair way to dispose of them.

The Take It to the Box program has drop-off locations at the Law Enforcement Center in Owatona and City Hall in Blooming Prairie. Each is open 24/7 throughout the year. But it’s a special awareness time with National Prescription Drug Take Back Day on Saturday, April 30.

Annette Duncan of the Steele County Safe and Drug-Free Coalition says, “The purpose of these boxes is to have a safe place to dispose of your unwanted, expired, unused prescriptions so that we’re removing and putting them from our medicine cabinets.” They should be kept in a place where they can be disposed of properly.”

“On the youth side, on whom we focus here on the safe and drug-free alliance, we want to make sure that we are not creating temptation in our homes. We are removing those items so that they Don’t fall into the wrong hand.”

The KRFO Talk of the Town program will feature Annette Duncan with Steele County Safe and Drug Free Coalition and Steele County Sheriff Lon Thiele on Thursday, April 28 at 9:40 a.m.

Saturday’s goal is to collect 1,200 pounds of prescription drugs between two Steele County locations. A press release from the Coalition states, “Drugs can be discarded as they are, requiring no preparation or removal from containers. All identifying information on prescriptions and bottles is incinerated. [ensure] Complete confidentiality.”

Steele County Sheriff Lon Thiele says the program began in the county in 2011 to “take prescription items off the street, not in the trash. Put them in a box where we can actually take care of them. Back in 2011 , my first year as sheriff when the boxes were delivered to a law enforcement center … and to City Hall at the Blooming Prairie Police Department.

“We’ve stepped up to help and make sure we can continue to make it easy to dispose of items properly. And that’s what we’re doing with these take it to box items and days.”

Even though Saturday, April 30, is an awareness day for those drug disposals, Thiele says, “We’re making it work for everyone. We’re open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365. And so is City Hall.” It’s in the Blooming Prairie… Since we’re doing this back in 2011, we’ve taken over 10,000 pounds, that’s over five tons of pharmaceuticals, off the road, and into an incendiary device where we get rid of them. Huh.”

• Law Enforcement Center, 204 E. Pearl Street, Ovatan
• Blooming Prairie City Hall, 138 Highway Avenue South