CANFIELD — City residents may be receiving a specialized green plastic bottle in 2023 as part of Project SMART.

SMART in this instance stands for School education, Medicine and drug disposal, Awareness, Recovery and Treatment. It is a program that was developed for local Rotary clubs to address the opioid crisis and polluted drinking water stemming from drugs entering the water systems.

Locally, Sieglinde Warren from the Canfield Rotary Club jumped on board after learning more about it.

“As a member of RAG AP (Rotary Action Group Addiction Prevention) I became actively involved with the organization and presently serve on the North American board,” she said. “Larry Kenemore, the coordinator of the North American RAG AP, presented a program outlining the importance of providing a safe way to dispose of unneeded or unwanted drugs without throwing them in the trash or flushing them down the toilet. Canfield Rotary decided to pursue the project.”

She said some areas have taken on all five aspects of Project SMART, while others only focus on one to start. The local club chose to start with the medicine and drug disposal aspect with the hope of considering the other aspects in the future. The first step the club needed to take was to have a city ordinance that accepts the program. City council was approached in December and city attorney Mark Fortunato said he would have an ordinance to vote on at the January meeting.

Once the ordinance is in place, specialized collection bottles would have to be sent out to every city resident.

Police chief Chuck Colucci informed Rotary members working with Project SMART that the city could not hand out a list of city resident’s mailing addresses. He suggested the club should work with the Canfield post of the U.S. Post Office to get the initial group of bottles into the resident’s hands.

The program would be paid for by PhRMA (Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America) as required by law.

“PhRMA has the responsibility to pay all costs based on the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court case Alameda vs. PhRMA,” Warren said. “As the result of the case, pharmaceutical manufacturers and others in the product chain are required to ensure that the nonconsumed medicines are properly managed.”

She said a nonprofit group called MADD (Medicine and Drug Disposal), coordinates the grants. Each grant is based on the population of the entity Rotary Club is working with. For Canfield, the grant amount would be $7,870, which would cover the cost of the drug disposal bottles.

“Rotary and the city of Canfield bear no cost for the bottles,” Warren said.

The bottles would be for the disposal of pills and capsules only. No liquid medications or other forms would be accepted through this system.

Once a bottles is filled, the resident simply takes it to the post office and mails it back to PhRMA. The bottle and drugs are then incinerated to create electricity. The residents are then mailed a new bottle, all for free.

Warren said there is absolutely no cost to the city or resident for this program. That made council President John Morvay happy.

“No cost to the city or residents sounds like a worthwhile project,” he said.

Once the program is up and running, Warren said Rotarians would only need to monitor it. The program would keep itself going as residents continue to use it.

Warren did say the program won’t replace the police department’s drug take-back program. Residents can still drop their unwanted drugs in the metal bins at the police department. For residents who are too busy, or elderly who are homebound, this programs offers another choice to make it easy to dispose of the unwanted drugs.

Warren said in cities that have started the program, the residents are using the bottles.

Canfield Rotarian Nicole Ramson said this program “has not been done anywhere in Ohio yet. This will be the first.”