CANYON COUNTY -- The numbers are startling.
One in ten teens around the nation has or is abusing prescription pills.
Users throw parties where pill popping is the thing to do.
But what those abusing prescription medications don't realize is just how dangerous and addictive the medications can be.
To help get unwanted and unused pills out of homes together, Nampa, Caldwell and Canyon County hosted a drop-off location to properly dispose of the medication.
Saturday, it was a safe opportunity to clean house or at least the medicine cabinet.
The results of those cleanings arrived by the bottles load, pill after pill, all medication that was not being used.
Caldwell Police Chief Chris Allgood was one of the many who collected the old, expired, or simply unused medications.
"We've seen everything from birth control pills to vitamins to Advil to…hydrocodone and Xanex and things like that," Allgood said.
Hydrocodone and OxyContin are the most coveted pain relievers for not only the sick, but the addicted as well. Prescription pills like these are one of the most heavily abused drugs teens are using today.
Adam Garcia knows this firsthand. At only 12-years-old he had appendicitis surgery and immediately became addicted to pills.
“I was high in school, my whole junior high and high school years, the entire time," Garcia said.
He used and abused pills for six years. Garcia was able to feed his habit with the pills left around in people's homes.
"Anybody has them really,” Garcia said. “You just ask any of your friends, ‘Hey, you have Vicodin? Yeah, I think my mom does' and they will sell it to me.”
Others took advantage of the pill disposal just to get the drugs out of their homes.
"I was trying to figure out what I was going to do with the drugs and now when I heard about this, I decided this was it," said Margie Myers, who disposed of her husband's medicine.
It's been only weeks since Myers’ husband died, but she wanted to get the 10 to 15 bottles of medication that he was taking daily out of her home.
Ginger Riggins felt the same. She has been hanging on to her meds for years, opting not to flush them.
"I am really pleased that we are doing this instead of having it go into the landfill or go into our water," Riggins said.
The turnout was better than expected and residents were relieved to get the medication off their hands.
"It's wonderful, this is exactly what we wanted to have happen," Allgood said.
So when will a drop off like Saturday's happen again? There are no scheduled dates just yet, but with the unexpected high turnout Allgood says he hopes to see another drop-off date soon.
Mercury and some other hazardous materials could be dropped off at the site as well. The purpose was to give families a place to safely dispose of the hazardous materials.
"The problem with mercury releases is two things,” said Eileen Loerch with the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality. “If it gets broken it is exceedingly expensive to clean up and really does have some very significant health risks. The main issue is that if it gets inside a building, people track it around…and it has an effect on the nervous system and several other organs and can be very, very serious."
Those mercury collected will be safely transported and disposed of.
"This is what we are collecting," said Jeff Berlik with Specialty Environmental Service, Inc. of some of the liquid mercury people had turned in. "We are also collecting thermometers and mercury switches and stuff like that."
The final collection numbers from the drop-off site are in and 175 pounds of mercury, 100 pounds of light bulbs and six 5-gallon buckets worth of prescription and over-the-counter drugs were taken in to be properly disposed of.
