This is why this is called a nation epidemic. This is another reason we encourage you to participate in the Arkansas Drug Take Back Day. The event is this Saturday at more than a 100 locations across Arkansas.

You don’t have to give anyone a name or anything. Just hand a person working a booth (you can find locations at artakeback.org your old, expired, unneeded prescription medications. Then think of the potential lives you are saving by that simple gesture. Do you know where people who misuse or abuse prescriptions mostly get them from? They get them from our medicine cabinets, or wherever they know meds are stored.

It may not be a bunch at once, but even just one of those meds they take from that prescription bottle can end in a tragedy. And when people burglarize homes now, they’re looking for your meds first.

There are many reasons to join us to #ReverseTheOpioidEpidemic, including that you don’t need to flush them down the drain, nor do they need to be thrown into the trash – as medicines are very harmful to the environment. The medicines collected at an Arkansas Drug Take Back location will be collected by law enforcement officers to be destroyed in an environmentally safe manner.

So we ask that you join us this Saturday. You may very well save someone’s life by doing so.

 

Born addicted: The number of opioid-addicted babies is soaring

JOHNSON CITY, TENN. — As a team of nurses unwrap baby Jayden from the comfort of his swaddling cloth, he wails. His tiny feet shake. His hands clench and unclench.

His suffering is obvious. Born dependent on opiates, the month-old boy and thousands like him are the smallest victims of the opioid epidemic.