Opioid Overdose Epidemic in South Dakota 2014-2017

More than 70,000 Americans are erased by drug overdoses every year — a death toll so vast it could fill a football stadium and spill into the parking lots. In South Dakota, 270 lives were lost to opioid overdoses between 2014 and 2017 alone. These weren’t faceless statistics. They were parents, siblings, neighbors — people who slipped through the cracks while addictive pills sat unnoticed in bathroom cabinets.

The Drug Enforcement Administration is hitting back with a nationwide offensive: the 17th National Prescription Drug Take Back Day, set for Saturday, April 27, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. At over 6,000 sites across the country — including 24 in South Dakota — residents can dump expired, unused, or dangerous prescription drugs with no questions asked. No names. No receipts. Just a chance to stop a bottle of pills from turning deadly.

Since 2010, the DEA’s Take Back initiative has hauled in nearly 11 million pounds of unused medications — a mountain of potential abuse dismantled pill by pill. In South Dakota, collection points will operate in 20 counties and on the Standing Rock and Lower Brule Reservations. But the DEA draws the line at liquids, needles, and sharp objects — no syringes, no exceptions.

Special Agent in Charge Richard Salter Jr. of the DEA’s Omaha Division laid it bare: ‘These were mothers, fathers, children, friends and neighbors in our communities who didn’t need to die.’ His voice carried the weight of a region gutted by addiction. Every unused opioid flushed from a home is a potential overdose averted — especially when most abusers get their drugs for free, pulled from a relative’s medicine drawer.

The numbers don’t lie. In 2017, an estimated 3.2 million Americans age 12 or older misused prescription painkillers in the past month. That makes prescription opioids the second-most abused drug in the nation, trailing only marijuana. The path to addiction often starts not in back alleys, but in suburban homes, where unused pills linger like ticking time bombs.

To find a drop-off site near you, visit www.DEATakeBack.com or call 1-800-882-9539. This isn’t just cleanup duty. It’s a frontline strike against an epidemic that’s already taken too much.

Related Federal Cases