On Monday the Drug Enforcement Agency released numbers for the April 26th annual prescription drug take back day.
The DEA's St Louis Division says they collected 620,000 pounds of unneeded and expired medications across the nation.
34,000 pounds were collected in the St. Louis division - covering Kansas, Missouri, and Southern Illinois.
St Louis Division Special Agent in Charge Michael Davis says their work with local law enforcement, brought in 800 pounds at the collection in Carbondale. Having the help of local agencies is just part of the equation, "We communicate with the public and we know they're listening because we get big numbers like this during prescription drug take back day. They're cleaning their medicine cabinets out and we're seeing a downward trend in overdose deaths."
Davis says even if prescriptions are sitting untouched and unseen in your medicine cabinet there's still plenty of danger with keeping them in your house, "Get those medications out of the medicine cabinet so that our young people and our people that are suffering from substance abuse disorders don't get their hands on it - harming themselves or possibly others."
If you missed this year's take back day, you can still get rid of your old or unused medication Davis says there are 17 thousand authorized collection sites available year round.
Go here to Every Day is Take Back Day
