Walking into the police station with a bag full of drugs takes courage.
But it needn’t, if the trip is to make a deposit in the newly installed prescription drug drop-off box in the Mansfield Public Safety Building.Painted squad-car black and white, the repurposed U.S. Postal Service mailbox also comes with new business hours for the collection program -- year round, instead of once every six months.The Public Safety Department’s program is combating the illegal use of prescription drugs by targeting a popular source -- accrued medications that are no longer wanted or needed by those who were prescribed them. It also gives an option to flushing the drugs down the toilet and into the water supply, or throwing them into the trash where they can be fished out by drug scavengers.Use of prescription painkillers and other medications for non-medical purposes is a national problem that appears on the rise in North Texas, said Tim Wing, a Mansfield police detective and an investigator with the Tarrant County Narcotics Unit.“Kids don’t have to go to some criminal organization to buy drugs,” Wing said. “They can go to grandmother’s cabinet, or they have uncles or parents who had back surgery and have hydrocodone,” a popular generic pain reliever.Police officials said they believe their extended program is a first for the Dallas-Fort Worth area.For the past several years, the department has participated in the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s National Prescription Drug Take-Back Day program, in which thousands of participating cities set up drop-off sites from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on two Saturdays a year.The next one is April 27, and Mansfield police will take part in that one as well.“A lot of cities participate, which causes a media blitz and gets the word out,” said Mansfield Police Sgt. David Griffin of the criminal investigation division. And some Mansfield residents might find two Saturdays a year to be more convenient than year-round week days, which is the Mansfield drop box’s schedule.But Wing believes the twice-a-year program has a drawback in that it might cause residents to hoard their medications, which could become hefty hauls for burglars or a drug-addicted family member. The year-round program will be more convenient for most, he said.“Hopefully, people will think of it just like dropping off their stuff at the cleaners -- make it easy as possible,” Wing said.The new drop-off box was put in service on March 6 or 7. It’s police service follows a stint at another law enforcement agency where officials used it for dropping off evidence.When it was handed off to Mansfield police, they had it fortified to better resist break-ins. Then it was sanded and painted by the water department, said Griffin.Just several days after putting it into service, Griffin unlocked the box to find it already half full of bags and bottles containing pills of all sizes and colors.It wasn’t a surprise to Griffin and Wing, who know Mansfield isn’t immune to the problem of prescription drug abuse. They are accustomed to finding stashes of prescription drugs when making arrests for possession of illicit drugs.“Almost every (drug-related) search warrant we go on, we find prescription drugs that are not prescribed to those people,” Wing said.Taking large doses of prescription painkillers can create a euphoric high but also can slow breathing, sometimes so much that breathing stops, causing death, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.The rate of first-time abuser of psychotherapeutic drugs -- pain relievers, tranquilizers, stimulants and sedatives -- in on the rise nationally, according to a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ national survey. In 2010, 2.4 million people aged 12 and older used prescription drugs for non-medical purposes for the first time during the previous 12 months.The “initiation rate” for non-medical pain reliever use continues to exceed that of all other drugs except marijuana, the survey found. Emergency room visits involving prescription drug abuse increased from 145,000 in 2004 to 306,000 in 2008, according to the study.In Tarrant County, overall drug overdoses -- of both illicit and prescription drugs -- have increased 52 percent over the past three years. Herschel Tebay, commander of the Tarrant County Narcotics Unit, cited 178 overdoses last year, compared with 117 in 2010 and 142 in 2011.Wing said that in most overdose cases he sees, prescription painkillers are used along with one or two other drugs, most often including heroin. Griffin said a Mansfield man in his early 20s died of an overdose of a so-called benzene cocktail.Another reckless practice occurs at “fishbowl parties,” where people bring pills of all sorts and drop them into a large bowl, then ingest combinations of them.“You mix it up and you take some and you want and see what kind of high you can get off it,” Griffin said.Wing and Griffin emphasized that the new drop-off program is strictly to gather these drugs and have them destroyed. Depositors can be anonymous and can peel the labels off drug containers if they want. But they do have to enter the Public Safety Building and have a clerk buzz them into the secure vestibule that contains the floor-bolted drop box and a security video camera.“It’s not for investigative purposes. It’s not big brother tracking anybody,” Wing said. “This isn’t a trap.”Robert Cadwallader, 817-390-7641 Twitter: @Kaddmann
