Navigation
 

Press Room

Press Releases:

Partnerships between businesses, government, and non-profits are often tenuous. But in Washington state, one such partnership is making huge strides to protect the community and environment, and is taking home awards as a result.

Legislators, Pharmacists, Health Advocates: Something Must Be Done to Ensure Safe Disposal of Unwanted Medicines

 

 

Articles About the Medicine Return Program:

Unused drugs can be a prescription for problems.

When they're improperly disposed of — as many are — leftover drugs also are environmentally problematic. Flushed down a toilet, biologically active medications can end up in groundwater, or in our waterways. Tossed into the garbage, they have the potential of leaching out as a liquid.

Not so many years ago, it was easy to get rid of unused medications. You just flushed them down the toilet.

Pharmaceuticals are being found in low concentrations in waterways throughout the United States, including Puget Sound. Many of these biologically active chemicals are known to affect marine creatures. An important question, researchers say, is which fish, shellfish and marine mammals are getting a high enough dose to affect their health.

If you still need convincing that prescription drug abuse among teens is a growing problem, you have only to talk to some of our school resource officers. Not only do teens fail to recognize prescription drug abuse as a path toward illicit drug use, officers tell us, they don't always consider the pills in their parents' medicine cabinets to be as deadly as street drugs.

Without a good system for returning unused prescriptions, Washington residents are stuck. Dealing with the problem shouldn't just be the burden of parents naïve in regard to a teen's curiosity about drugs, an 85-year-old woman unsure what to do with the four blood-pressure prescriptions that didn't work or the middle-aged man uncertain whether he could use those old pills for something. Pharmaceutical companies, the folks who stuff magazines full of ads so we will choose their drug for our aches and ills, seem to think it's up to consumers to figure out what to do. The mega corporations should take some responsibility.

A state lawmaker wants to make drug companies responsible for disposing of unused medicine that could end up in the environment or be abused by teens.

Rep. Dawn Morrell, D-Puyallup, says she'll push legislation requiring pharmaceutical companies to set up and pay for a statewide drug disposal program, much in the way that electronics manufacturers are now required to recycle TVs and computers.

With increased awareness of pharmaceuticals in streams, groundwater and even drinking water, now is a good time to think about a producer-responsibility approach to pharmaceuticals in Washington. 

Don't know what to do with your old, expired medications? Until now, there has been no safe and environmentally benign way to dispose of unused or expired medicine.

Recent data on drug trends in this country show that teens see abusing prescription drugs and over-the-counter medicines as safer than street drugs.

How many bottles or vials of medication do you have in your home?

Patients at seven Group Health clinics in Washington state have a new way to get rid of their old medications: They just take them to the clinics and drop them into big blue bins - similar to mail boxes - as part of a pilot program that could be a model for other health care systems nationwide, says Shirley Reitz, associate director for clinical pharmacy services.

Pioneering 'drug take-back' program could help keep water safe. Group Health and the state Department of Ecology are part of a growing coalition trying to get manufacturers to take back old medicine the way some programs target TVs and other electronics.

At one time, pharmacies and physicians were OK with consumers flushing unwanted or expired medications down the toilet or throwing them in the garbage. Now, we know better.