SUN CITY WEST, AZ — The Arizona Attorney General's Office is encouraging people to get rid of old documents and medications. The office held a shred-a-thon and drug take-back event on Saturday in Sun City West.
Numerous people at the event told ABC15 they've had their identity stolen.
"We get a lot of the stories of people that have been victims more so than people that are unsure of it happening," Courtney Bennett, with the AG's Office said.
However, Bennett says its not just the elderly community that's easily targeted.
"We're seeing a lot online now that millennials and younger people are a little more free with their information on the internet," Bennett said. "So we do see a lot of that with millennials."
Bennett says the younger generation is also abusing pills taken from medicine cabinets.
"A lot of the illicit drug use that we find is from people taking drugs actually from their own home or from their grandparent's home," Bennett said.
Bennett says that's why it's safer to turn those unused pills over to law enforcement.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, 46 people die every day from overdoses involving prescription pills. Since June of 2017, The Arizona Department of Health Services says over 2,000 people in our state have died because of opioids.
If you were unable to make it to Saturday's event, most police stations have drug take-back boxes that you can use to drop off unused prescriptions at any time.
