The Drug Enforcement Administration collected 742,497 pounds — or 371 tons — of prescription medications nationwide during its sixth National Prescription Drug Take-Back Day last month.

New records were set for the amount of prescription drugs collected in the Denver Field Division’s four states of Colorado, Montana, Utah and Wyoming, the DEA reported.

In Colorado, the DEA and its partner agencies collected 21,091 pounds of prescription medications.

“We collected 1,799 pounds in El Paso County,” Special Agent Paul Roach of the Denver Field Division said in an email.

The 371 tons of prescription medications collected in April were from more than 5,829 locations manned by 4,312 state, local and tribal law enforcement agencies that partnered with the DEA on the event.

“When added to the collections from DEA’s previous five Take-Back events, more than 2.8 million pounds (1,409 tons) of prescription medications have been removed from circulation,” the DEA said.

Here’s what the DEA said about the Take-Back Day:

The National Prescription Drug Take-Back Day aims to provide a safe, convenient, and responsible means of disposing of prescription drugs, while also educating the general public about the potential for abuse of medications.

According to the 2011 Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), twice as many Americans regularly abused prescription drugs than the number of those who regularly used cocaine, hallucinogens, heroin, and inhalants combined. That same study revealed more than 70 percent of people abusing prescription pain relievers got them through friends or relatives, a statistic that includes raiding the family medicine cabinet.

The DEA’s Take-Back events are a significant piece of the White House’s prescription drug abuse prevention strategy released in 2011 by the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Disposal of unwanted, unused or expired drugs is one of four strategies for reducing prescription drug abuse and diversion laid out in Epidemic: Responding to America’s Prescription Drug Abuse Crisis. The other strategies include education of health care providers, patients, parents and youth; enhancing and encouraging the establishment of prescription drug monitoring programs in all the states; and increased enforcement to address doctor shopping and pill mills.