You want to get rid of your expired opiod prescription drugs, but you’re a hundred miles away from an official disposal drop box.

Enter the new Deterra Medication Disposal Bags, the newest weapon in the national effort to curb opiod drug overuse and abuse.

Vicki Turner is the Director of The Prevention Resource Center at the Montana Department of Health and Human Services. Turner said on Monday, these Deterra bags are the ideal solution for rural communities with no drug drop-box locations nearby.

“It’s a pretty cool technology,” Turner said. “They’re an omni-degradable bag, and they contain an activated carbon that, when mixed with warm water, renders the pharmaceutical compounds inert, and thus safe for household trash.”

Turner said the bags are big enough to hold a good-sized number of prescription drugs.

“These bags will hold about 45 pills, or six Fentanyl patches, or eight ounces of prescription medication,” she said. “You just put your medication into the bag, add a cup of warm water, seal the bag up, shake it, and a carbon charge inside the bag will render the drugs inert.”

Turner said the Deterra bags are available in all 56 Montana counties, but there are only 100,000 bags for the entire state.

“Only half of the counties in our state have drug disposal drop boxes,” she continued. “There are three drop boxes in Missoula, but in the outlying areas where people may not come into Missoula, they will use these Deterra drug disposal bags.”

The bags are free, and prevention specialists will distribute them to pharmacies, prescribers, health departments, law enforcement and schools, who will then distribute them to individual households.

Get more details by contacting your nearest health department or pharmacy.

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