Ocean County Pill Burn: 19 Tons Of Meds Destroyed Under Coronato

TOMS RIVER, NJ — Efforts to battle the opioid crisis in Ocean County have taken on many avenues since Joseph D. Coronato was sworn in as prosecutor in 2013.

From equipping law enforcement and first responders with naloxone, creating a countywide pawn shop registry that tracks items to deter thieves and efforts to get addicts into treatment, to concerted law enforcement investigations that have led to a number of arrests, the efforts have been expansive.

Few have been as simple and as community oriented as the prescription medication collections and subsequent pill burns.

Ocean County completed another pill burn on Sept. 28, said Al Della Fave, spokesman for the prosecutor's office, destroying nearly 4,000 pounds of pills.

The pills were unneeded prescription medications that people turned in to authorities through Project Medicine Drop boxes at police departments across Ocean County. The dropboxes are anonymous and secure, and the disposals keep the medications out of the hands of those looking for pills to sell and also out of the hands of kids who may not understand the dangers.

In total, Ocean County has burned more than 19 tons of prescription pills: 38,680 pounds since the program's inception. The first pill burn was 2,220 pounds, and since that Oct. 3, 2104 pill burn the county has collected an average of nearly 760 pounds of pills per month.

That's nearly 26 million pills, roughly, that have been incinerated and not flowed to the streets and into the hands of dealers and addicts, based on a rough estimation we made on Patch in 2016.

Below is the list of burn dates and totals:

• Oct. 3, 2014 2,220 pounds
• March 27, 2015 2,880 pounds
• July 17, 2015 2,520 pounds
• Oct. 29, 2015 2,300 pounds
• Dec. 2, 2015 1,040 pounds
• April 13, 2016 2,380 pounds
• July 20, 2016 2,960 pounds
• Oct. 26, 2016 2,800 pounds
• March 1, 2017 3,280 pounds
• Aug. 3, 2017 4,460 pounds
• Dec. 14, 2017 4,420 pounds
• May 18, 2018 3,500 pounds
• Sept. 28, 2018 3,920 pounds

If you have medications you are looking to get rid of, whether they are ones prescribed to you, ones left behind after a relative's death, ones prescribed to your children, there are Project Medicine Drop boxes at most of the county's police departments (check the list here).

The boxes only take pills in most cases. Hypodermic needles of any kind are not accepted, nor are liquid medications.

Peel off the label with the identifying information and you can drop it right into the box.

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Photos provided by the Ocean County Prosecutor's Office