United States Drug Enforcement Administration

DENVER – On Oct. 28, 2023, the community once again emptied their medicine cabinets to help dispose of old, unwanted, and expired medications. Nationwide, DEA and its law enforcement partners collected 599,897 pounds of unneeded medications at 4,675 collection sites.

The Rocky Mountain Field Division collected just over 18,500 pounds of unneeded medications at nearly 200 sites throughout Colorado, Montana, Utah, and Wyoming.

• Utah – 8,165 pounds
• Colorado – 7,988 pounds
• Wyoming – 1,232 pounds
• Montana – 1,109 pounds
• Tribal Land: 10 pounds

For more than a decade, DEA’s National Prescription Take Back Day has removed almost 17.9 million pounds of unneeded medications from communities across the country.

“We want to thank everyone who participated in DEA’s National Prescription Drug Take Back Day this fall in an effort to make our communities safer and healthier,” said DEA Acting Special Agent in Charge David Olesky. “Take Back Day is a community-wide effort that we cannot accomplish without our law enforcement partners and the public’s participation. We appreciate everyone who took the time to clean out their medicine cabinets and protect their loved ones.”

According to a report published by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), a majority of people who use prescription medication for a nonmedical purpose obtained that medication from a family member or friend. Removing unnecessary medications from the home can help prevent situations involving; not taking medication as intended or dosed; taking someone else’s prescription; and taking the medicine for euphoric effects rather than medicinal purposes.

DEA continues to expand opportunities to make safe disposal of medications more accessible nationwide. We encourage people to remove unnecessary medications from their home regularly and dispose of it at one of the nearly 17,000 permanent drug-drop boxes located in communities across the country. Those locations can be found here. Safe medication disposal receptacles along with DEA Take Back events provide families easy, no-cost opportunities to get rid of unnecessary medicines stored in the home.

Complete results for DEA’s fall National Prescription Drug Take Back Day are available at Take Back Day (dea.gov).

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