Prescription take back day saw a lot of community support, bringing people together to try and find solutions regarding the toxic drug crisis.

By Tommy Osborne

Prescription Take Back Day

Largest prescription take back day in Prince George brings grassroots movements together

Aug 28, 2025 | 4:27 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – Prince George City Hall hosted the city’s biggest prescription take back day, which is a day encouraging people to bring any unused or expired prescriptions to be safely disposed of.

“We have too many young people in our community that are self-harming or using prescription medications as a first step to something stronger and far more lethal,” said MLA for Prince George-Valemount Rosalyn Bird, who spearheaded the efforts to bring the event to life.

“My son, Tanner, two years after he passed, my kids came to me and said, ‘hey, mom, Tanner used to take your prescription medications out of your ensuite,” and he was using them to get high or for anti-anxiety,” added Michelle Miller of Broken Hearts of Fentanyl.

The event welcomed prescriptions of all kinds, ranging from over the counter medicines to opioids, to be safely disposed of by Northern Health, who would safely store the medications in a container to be dissolved.

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“People are wanting solutions and they’re wanting to know what they can do to participate, to try and reduce the crisis. So this is one small grassroots initiative that allows people to do that,” Bird said.

Bird explained she was inspired by the United States’s prescription take back days, which have seen great success in getting potentially harmful medications safely disposed of, so she wanted to bring it to Prince George.

“Just to give you an example of how successful that campaign has been: April of 2025, they collected more than 620 pounds of medication. That’s in a single day,” Bird said.

“I can’t wait to weigh it for our first event, and we’re going to do this annually because it’s important for people to clean. It happened to me, it can happen to you, little kids get into medicine cabinets all the time. I’m a registered nurse, retiring, and I’ve seen little kids that have gotten to their parents medications. I’ve heard of our youth getting into their medications and handing them out,” Miller said.

As the name of the event implies, the focus is around returning prescriptions, but it was much more than that. The day also saw many community organizations connecting with people at the event to share the resources available to help people, as well as learn more about all the available supports.

“Everybody has their own ideas, their own agencies of what harm reduction looks like. So working together and and not being judgmental and accepting everyone, what they’re doing is, is harm reduction, and it’s really important,” Miller said.

Among the groups in attendance was the Canadian Mental Health Association, which says it’s focused on a “more sociological, holistic perspective,” on how to help anyone struggling with substance use.

“Many of our clients in specialized housing are deep in addiction when we’re supporting them on a path to recovery. And that recovery is what recovery looks like to them, not our prescribed idea of what recovery is,” said the CMHA Northern B.C.’s Executive Director Elaine Laberge.

Bird added she hopes to make prescription take back day a provincial event, and has brought a motion forward to legislature hoping to partner prescription take back day with international overdose awareness day across the province.

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