Thank You Five Towns!!! Put A Lid On It Campaign Reaches New Goals
As part of its LID (Lock Inventory Dispose) campaign, the Saving Lives Five Towns Drug & Alcohol Coalition, under the auspices of the Marion & Aaron Gural JCC, successfully hosted its Second Annual Prescription Drug Take Back Day at the Hatzalah Station on West Broadway on April 23rd.
The LID Campaign encourages people to lock their needed medications, inventory what they have and easily and safely dispose of those meds that are unused or expired by bringing them to our Drug Take Back event. Recognizing the high proportion of the observant Jewish community in our area, Susan Blauner, Director of Saving Lives explained, “The national drug take back days are held on Saturdays, but to accommodate the Five Towns, we hold ours on Sunday to great success.” This past Sunday, 134 pounds of meds were collected as people walked or drove in and dropped off their unneeded medications. This is almost double the amount we collected at our first well-received and well-attended program last year and has now become an annual community event.
“People were blessing and thanking us for making this happen. It’s clearly making a difference and helping to save lives,” continued Blauner.
Saving Lives is very grateful to our Coalition partners, first of all to Hatzalah of the Rockaways and Nassau for allowing us the annual use of their emergency station, as well as to the Nassau County Police Department, Northwell Health, Hewlett Woodmere Business District, Tempo Group and others who participated and supported Saving Lives on this very important project.
Launched in 2019, the Coalition is made up of community leaders from business, education, government, health care, law enforcement, faith-based, media, parents and young people, youth services and behavioral health organizations. The Coalition will continue its work to focus on youth mental health, mental health, education, prevention and awareness of the dangers of youth drug and alcohol misuse.
For more information about Saving Lives or to find out where permanent local medication drop boxes are located, please contact Susan Blauner at: susan.blauner@guraljcc.org or 516.569.6733.