GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. - Michiganders dropped off their unused or expired opioids and other prescription drugs at more than 150 collection sites Saturday.
Volunteers from Families Against Narcotics, commonly known as FAN, assisted Spectrum Health and the Grand Rapids Police Department in collecting over 180 pounds of drugs.
Each person or family driving through the Seward Avenue drop-off site was greeted with by Theresa Adkison, a mother whose son died from an opioid overdose in January. She wears a necklace containing his ashes and impressed by his fingerprint.
"My son is here with with me," Adkison said. "I do all of this for him."
Adkison passed out literature on opioids and other narcotics. She says she doesn't want others to experience the pain of losing a child to opioids.
"I don't want my son's death to be a statistic," Adkison said. "And I wanted to, maybe, be able to help somebody else. So I want to be an advocate for addicts and bring education and awareness to the community."
According to a recent study by the IQVIA institute, opioid painkiller prescriptions dropped in 2017. But a lot of people are taking advantage of unused or expired pill bottles, said Mary DeBoer, executive secretary for the Grand Rapids Chapter of FAN.
"For young kids ot go into medicine cabinets or go into mom's dresser drawer and find pill bottle after pill bottle, we're sending the wrong message to people and our children," DeBoer said. "Meds are taken for a purpose and only for that medical purpose."
The opioid crisis is something law enforcement can't "lock" its way out of, said Kent County Prosecutor Chris Becker, who also sits on the board at FAN.
"There are different things in the community we can do like this: drug take back to remove those things from the cabinets that have been there," Becker said. "The less access, the less chance for abuse. And the less chance for abuse, the less chance they get involved in the criminal justice system, which is something I think all law enforcement is very supportive of."
Last year, the same Grand Rapids location collected more than 280 pounds of drugs. Organizers say there was a drop because more collection sites popped up around the state.
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