LA JARA — Those bottles of over-the-counter or prescription medications that have expired or gone unused for years can mean big trouble for families.  
Those items shouldn't fall into children's hands, either by accident, or because someone’s looking for a way to get high.
They’re in the back of a bathroom drawer or on the top shelf of the medicine cabinet.  
Did you know the average American household has four pounds of prescribed and over-the-counter medicines?
To safely dispose of these, La Jara Pharmacy has a new household medication drop box that is ready to receive these worrisome pharmaceuticals.
Teens say prescription medicines are easier to get than alcohol because they can access them from their friends’ and families’ medicine cabinets.
Yet, safely getting rid of unused medications can be confusing.  
The shouldn't be simply dumped them in the trash or, worse yet, disposed of by following the old disposal method of flushing them down the toilet. Eighty percent of sampled streams across the U.S. contain small amounts of pharmaceutical residues.
Fortunately, there’s a better, safer solution to getting rid of those potentially dangerous and certainly troubling medicines.  
Here’s how to use the drop box.  First, gather your unused or expired prescriptions, over the counter medications, or even vitamins. Second, cross out your name on any labels or containers (for your privacy).  Finally, place the meds in the drop box, containers and all. Other medications like ointments, liquids, and patches are okay as well.  
There are some limits on what you can’t drop off and those are posted on the drop box.
The La Jara Pharmacy then packages the discarded materials and sends them off to a state contractor where they are safely incinerated.
Disposing of unused or out-of-date medications does three things: it removes them from temptation and possible abuse or misuse; it clears out a storage problem; most importantly, it gives you peace of mind that those vexing medications are no longer a worry or a complication in your life.
 This is a major expansion of the “Take Meds Seriously” effort led by the Colorado Consortium for Prescription Drug Abuse Prevention. For questions about what drugs can be disposed of safely, visit TakeMedsBack.org.