Producer Responsibility or Product Stewardship

Why should pharmaceutical producers provide secure medicine return programs? 

“Producer responsibility” means that the companies that produce a product take responsibility for that product once it is no longer wanted.  The producers create systems to make sure that the product is collected and recycled or disposed to protect public health and the environment.  In its simplest terms, the concept is, “You make it, you take it back.”   The idea is that everyone, including companies, should clean up after themselves.

Is it fair to ask pharmaceutical producers to pay for secure medicine return programs?

Asking all the companies that sell medicines in our state to share the costs of a statewide medicine return program is reasonable because they are the ones that profit most from this product.  Total annual sales of prescription drugs and over-the-counter medicines in Washington State are $3.87 billion.  And pharmaceutical manufacturers spend $451 million a year in Washington promoting their products.

It would cost less than half a penny per container of medicine sold in Washington to operate a statewide medicine return program, based on estimates from existing medicine return programs.  Producers can easily internalize this into the cost of the product, just as they do for other costs like advertising and product promotion or safety testing.

 
Sustainable funding from drug manufacturers will relieve the burden that some local police, county sheriffs, and pharmacies have been carrying to operate the medicine return programs that currently serve small portions of the state.  And producer funding would expand this important service to communities across the state. 

In the past, local governments and their taxpayers have been responsible for disposing or recycling of waste products.  But local governments do not have the funding to pay for an ever-increasing number of products that require special disposal. And it is not fair to ask taxpayers to shoulder the burden of disposal costs when not everyone buys the same amount of medication.

Some suggest that pharmacies should pay for drug take-back programs, but it does not make sense to have pharmacies pay for a program because they simply dispense medicines.  Pharmacies are not part of the design and development of medicines -- and they don’t have a large profit margin.  It is most fair for the producers of medicines to cover the costs of secure drug take-back.

Pharmaceutical Companies Provide Medicine Return Programs in Other Countries.

What many people don’t know is that the very same pharmaceutical producers that sell medicines in Washington already provide and pay for successful medicine return programs in British Columbia, Canada  and several European countries.  Importantly, costs of medicines in these provinces and countries have not increased as a result of the medicine return programs.

To learn more about producer responsibility and product stewardship, see:

British Columbia's Medications Return Program website
Factsheet - British Columbia's Medications Return Program
Northwest Product Stewardship Council's website