By Nathan Ham
The Watauga County Sheriff’s Office in partnership with the Boone Police Department, Blowing Rock Police Department, Town of Boone Public Utilities, Western Youth Network of Boone and Watauga Substance Abuse Prevention held their 11th bi-annual drug drop on October 13.
The event started in October of 2010 as a way for citizens to safely discard prescription and nonprescription drugs that were no longer needed. Drop-off events like these go a long way to keep such drugs away from being misused or improperly discarded in a way that could affect the area ground water.
There were four different locations in the county for people to drop off their unwanted drugs and after the final count, a total of 2,369.5 ounces of prescription and non-prescription drugs were collected. That number included 21.1 ounces of opioids, 1.5 ounces of stimulants and 26.3 ounces of Benzodiazepines. There was also 272 ounces of liquid prescription and nonprescription medicines discarded.
The next drug drop-off will be happening sometime in the spring of 2019.
The Watauga County Sheriff’s Department would like to thank the following individuals for helping make this event possible: Mike Barefoot (Blowing Rock PD), Mike Fox (Blowing Rock PD), April Gunther (Boone PD), Carrie Phillips (Town of Boone Public Utilities), Elisa Phillips (Town of Boone Public Utilities), Barbara Payne (Watauga County Sheriff’s Office) John Price (Watauga County Sheriff’s Office), Sarah Fetterolf (Watauga County Sheriff’s Office), Sgt. Casey Miller (Watauga County Sheriff’s Office), Lt. Wes Hawkins (Watauga County Sheriff’s Office), Gail Pinkham (Watauga Substance Abuse Prevention), Sherry Perry (Watauga Substance Abuse Prevention), Lindsey Stockman (Western Youth Network of Boone) and Tommy Boyd (Western Youth Network of Boone).
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