SD County To Host Drug Take Back Day: What To Know

SAN DIEGO, CA — As the drug overdose epidemic continues to take lives nationally and statewide, San Diego County will host several sites this month where residents can discard unneeded medications.

Removing unused, old or expired medications from medicine cabinets is a measure of preventing misuse and opioid addiction from developing in the first place.

National Prescription Drug Take Back Day will kick off April 30 and residents are encouraged to drop off medicines in San Diego County.

The drop-off event is open from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the following locations:

• Imperial Beach Sheriff’s Substation - 845 Imperial Beach Boulevard, Imperial Beach
• Poway Sheriff's Station - 13100 Bowron Road, Poway
• San Marcos Sheriff’s Station - 182 Santar Place, San Marcos
• Alpine Sheriff's Station - 2751 Alpine Boulevard, Alpine

The drop-off is free and anonymous.

"Unwanted or expired prescription drugs can be dangerous to the community by falling into the wrong hands," the San Diego Sheriff's Department said in a statement.

Those who can't participate in the local take back day can drop off unwanted prescriptions at any San Diego sheriff's station or substation during normal business hours. For more information, click here.

During the last take back day on Oct. 23, 2021, 41,970 pounds of various medications were recovered, according to United States Drug Enforcement Administration.

The rate of overdose deaths among U.S. teenagers nearly doubled in 2020, the first year of the coronavirus pandemic, and rose another 20% in the first half of 2021 compared with the 10 years before the pandemic, even as drug use remained generally stable during the same period, according to new UCLA research announced Tuesday.

It is the first time in recorded history that the teen drug death rate has seen an exponential rise, said lead author Dr. Joseph Friedman, an addiction researcher and Ph.D. candidate at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

"The increases are almost entirely due to illicit fentanyls, which are increasingly found in counterfeit pills," Friedman said. "These counterfeit pills are spreading across the nation, and teens may not realize they are dangerous."

READ MORE: Teen Overdose Deaths Skyrocket During Pandemic: UCLA

Fake prescription pills, as well as other illegal drugs, are being cut with fentanyl because the synthetic opioid is so cheap to manufacture, but it's behind a deadly wave of poisonings that killed more than 11,000 Californians for the period ending October 2021, according to provisional data published last month by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In California, 11,476 people died from fentanyl toxicity from October 2020 to October 2021. It represents a 26.55 percent increase over the previous year, according to the CDC data.

READ MORE: DEA Warns Of 'Mass Overdose Events' From Fentanyl: See California Data

City News Service and Patch staffer Toni McAllister contributed to this report.