Schools

Bellmore-Merrick Parent Center to hold Drug Take-Back Day

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The Bellmore-Merrick Community Parent Center and the Bellmore-Merrick Central High School District will host a Drug Take-Back Day on Saturday, May 30, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Mepham High School, 2401 Camp Ave., Bellmore.

At the event, Nassau County police officers will collect unused opioid-based prescription painkillers and other common household drugs.

Many young people swipe narcotic pain analgesics from their parents’ and grandparents’ medicine cabinets to get high. According to the most recent Monitoring the Future study — the nation’s largest survey of drug use among young people, taken by the Office of National Drug Control Policy — prescription medication is the second-most abused category of drugs, after marijuana. Meanwhile, the latest National Survey on Drug Use and Health states that 70 percent of people who abuse prescription pain relievers get them from friends or relatives, while just 5 percent buy them from drug dealers or over the Internet.

Drug abusers who pop pain pills often graduate to heroin, another opioid, which sells for as little as $5 a bag on the street, according to addiction experts. The idea behind drug take-back events is to get prescription painkillers and other potentially harmful drugs out of people’s medicine cabinets and off the street. Police collect the drugs and burn them.

When dropping off medications, keep them in their original containers, with names, addresses and telephone numbers blacked out for privacy. Leave the drug type. Illegal drugs may be dropped off anonymously as well. No needles, syringes, lancets, thermometers, intravenous bags or chemotherapy drugs will be accepted.


For more information, call:

n Wendy Tepfer, the Parent Center executive director, at (516) 992-1086.

n Saul Lerner, director of health, phys. ed. and athletics for the Bellmore-Merrick Central School District, at (516) 992-1048.

n Michael Venditto, New York state senator, at (516) 882-0630.

n Steve Rhoads, Nassau County legislator, at (516) 571-6219.

n Laura Curran, county legislator, (516) 571-6205.