News Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 19, 2011
Contact: Public Affairs
Number: (202) 307-7977



Over 5,300 Sites Join DEA Nationwide Effort
to Take-Back Prescription Drugs on April 30th

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) – The Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA’s)
second National Prescription Drug Take-Back Day is this Saturday, April 30th. More than 5,300 sites nationwide have joined the effort that seeks to prevent pill abuse and theft. This is hundreds more sites than were established for the event last fall. The free event will be held from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. local time.

Government, community, public health and law enforcement partners at these sites will be working together to collect expired, unused, and unwanted prescription drugs that are potentially dangerous if left in the family’s medicine cabinet.

Last September, Americans turned in over 242,000 pounds—121 tons—of prescription drugs at nearly 4,100 sites operated by more than 3,000 of the DEA’s state and local law enforcement partners. Also last fall, Congress passed the Safe and Secure Drug Disposal Act of 2010, which amends the Controlled Substances Act to allow users of controlled substance medications to dispose of them by delivering them to entities authorized by the Attorney General to accept them. The Act also allows the Attorney General to authorize long term care facilities to dispose of their residents’ controlled substances in certain instances. DEA is presently drafting regulations to implement the Act.

Collection sites in every local community can be found by going to www.dea.gov and clicking on the “Got Drugs?” banner at the top of the home page, which connects to a database that citizens can search by zip code, city or county. This site is continuously updated with new take-back locations. In addition, interested media can now go to: www.nationaltakebackday.com to download a public service announcement about the initiative.

This initiative addresses a vital public safety and public health issue. Medicines that languish in home cabinets are highly susceptible to diversion, misuse, and abuse. Rates of prescription drug abuse in the U.S. are alarmingly high—more Americans currently abuse prescription drugs than the number of those using cocaine, hallucinogens, and heroin combined, according to the 2009 National Survey on Drug Use and Health. Studies show that individuals that abuse prescription drugs often obtained them from family and friends, including from the home medicine cabinet. In addition, many Americans do not know how to properly dispose of their unused medicine, often flushing them down the toilet or throwing them away – both potential safety and health hazards.

“The overwhelming public response to DEA's first nationwide Take-Back event last fall not only rid homes of potentially harmful prescription drugs, but was an unprecedented opportunity to educate everyone about the growing prescription drug abuse problem," said DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart. “Studies have shown that, for many, prescription drugs are the very first drugs they abuse—and all too often they aren’t the last. That is why we are committed to helping Americans keep their homes safe by ridding their medicine cabinets of expired, unused, and unwanted drugs.”

“I encourage every American to take advantage of this valuable opportunity to safely dispose of unused, un-needed, or expired prescription drugs,” said Gil Kerlikowkse, Director of National Drug Control Policy.  “Preventing these readily available and potentially deadly drugs from being diverted and misused is something each and every one of us can do to help reduce the epidemic of prescription drug abuse that is harming so many Americans.”    

Other participants in this initiative include the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy; the American Association of Poison Control Centers; the Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America; D.A.R.E. America; the Federation of State Medical Boards; the U. S. Health Resources and Services Administration; the International Association of Chiefs of Police; the National Association of Attorneys General; the National Family Partnership; the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives; the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy; the National District Attorneys Association; the National Sheriffs Association; and The Partnership at Drugfree.org.

Quoted:



Fuck that.





Do not invite the MAN into your life.





Throw them in the trash.

Quoted:


I fully agree with that rule, but this is a bit complicated:

The problem with flushing or burying medicines is that they end up in the water supply.

Do you have any idea how much prozac is floating around most city water supplies?  Its a lot more than I'm comfortable with.

I'm not sure what the best way to render the medicines inert would be, probably an intense heat such as you would find at the center of a large bonfire, but that might make them airborne.



 

Quoted:
"I have 60 Perocet and 30 Vicoden's I'd like to turn in"

"Sir, please come with us." Please place the medication in this special Hazardous Wasted..er, waste bag, dude. Er, sir.


END.

Quoted:


I fully agree with that rule, but this is a bit complicated:

The problem with flushing or burying medicines is that they end up in the water supply.

Do you have any idea how much prozac is floating around most city water supplies?  Its a lot more than I'm comfortable with.I'm not sure what the best way to render the medicines inert would be, probably an intense heat such as you would find at the center of a large bonfire, but that might make them airborne.



 

Quoted:


I fully agree with that rule, but this is a bit complicated:

The problem with flushing or burying medicines is that they end up in the water supply.

Do you have any idea how much prozac is floating around most city water supplies?  Its a lot more than I'm comfortable with.

I'm not sure what the best way to render the medicines inert would be, probably an intense heat such as you would find at the center of a large bonfire, but that might make them airborne.



 

Quoted:







I fully agree with that rule, but this is a bit complicated:



The problem with flushing or burying medicines is that they end up in the water supply.



Do you have any idea how much prozac is floating around most city water supplies?  Its a lot more than I'm comfortable with.



I'm not sure what the best way to render the medicines inert would be, probably an intense heat such as you would find at the center of a large bonfire, but that might make them airborne.
 

Quoted:


I fully agree with that rule, but this is a bit complicated:

The problem with flushing or burying medicines is that they end up in the water supply.

Do you have any idea how much prozac is floating around most city water supplies?  Its a lot more than I'm comfortable with.

I'm not sure what the best way to render the medicines inert would be, probably an intense heat such as you would find at the center of a large bonfire, but that might make them airborne.



 

Quoted:
I heard on the news that the gov considers prescription drug abuse worse than the crack epidemic of the 90's.  Just sayin.

Quoted:







I fully agree with that rule, but this is a bit complicated:



The problem with flushing or burying medicines is that they end up in the water supply.



Do you have any idea how much prozac is floating around most city water supplies? Its a lot more than I'm comfortable with.



I'm not sure what the best way to render the medicines inert would be, probably an intense heat such as you would find at the center of a large bonfire, but that might make them airborne.

Quoted:







Don't flush them. Burn them.

Quoted:







Is there any truth to this? I've always equated it to NYC sewer alligators.

Quoted:







Please (as a pharmacist) do not flush pills down the toilet. Just what you want, man boobs because grandma is flushing her estrogen pills into your water supply.



Crush or destroy the pills, put in sealable container mixed with something that no one will want to be rifling through and toss with the trash.

Quoted:





http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-03-10-drugs-tap-water_N.htm



Not specifying prozac outright, but yes-there are detectable amounts of meds in many water supplies.



Some are unavoidable. You take the meds, some get pissed or shat out totally unchanged or only metabolized to something still active.



Some are avoidable-grandma dies and the grandkids flush her cabinet of meds down the toilet.

Quoted:











No, it does not.  A lined, properly-maintained landfill will keep them just fine.  But even then drugs will still go down the toilet because people excrete unmetabolized drugs every time they pee.



And do you have any idea how much Prozac is in the water supply, because I haven't seen any legitimate numbers –– just frantic hand-waving from the usual suspects.  If it's in the parts-per-trillion range then a person would have to drink hundreds of gallons a day just to get the equivalent of a single dose.   It's not a public health risk by any stretch of the imagination.



I can see the advantages of having a system to properly dispose of prescription drugs with a high potential for abuse, but taking your ibuprofen to the cops for disposal is idiotic and unnecessary.

Quoted:
Haha!  I worked this silliness last year, and it was rated as a great success because of the massive weight of "drugs" turned in.



Know what almost all of it was?






Expired vitamins, flu vaccine, Pedialyte, Robitussin, Tylenol, Neosporin, etc., mostly turned in by clinics, urgent care facilities, and the like, who were delighted to have a place to dispose of old meds free of charge.

It's a colossal joke.

Quoted:





I grew up in a house that was on well water, near a landfill.



One failure of that liner could have contaminated our water supply, but you are probably content to toss meds in the trash because you are not in that situation.



The bottom line here is that not enough studies are done to really know if the trace amounts of pharmaceuticals in our water can have negative affects on us, and personally, I would rather err on the side of caution until we are sure.



I never once suggested taking an OTC med to the cops for disposal, but I do absolutely believe that proper disposal of prescription medications is the responsible thing to do.

Quoted:







A failure of a liner at your local landfill will probably put much more nasty chemicals than Prozac into your water supply.  Out of curiosity, do you have it tested yearly and have you noticed any issues with other contaminants?



Trace amounts of any chemical are irrelevant.  Everything depends on the dose –– including hormones –– and just because there is a chemical in your water supply doesn't mean it's hazardous to your health.



I could take a sample of your water today, and with sensitive enough equipment find arsenic, mercury, lead, pesticide residues, radioactive materials, and all sorts of other scary-sounding chemicals in it.  They won't affect your health unless the concentration becomes high enough to create a physiologically-significant reaction.



The Dose Makes the Poison.   Swallowing two aspirin will break your fever or get rid of your headache; swallowing a whole bottle will put you in the hospital –– if you survive.



And swallowing a tiny speck of aspirin left on your finger will do nothing.

Quoted:
Trace amounts of any chemical are irrelevant.  Everything depends on the dose –– including hormones –– and just because there is a chemical in your water supply doesn't mean it's hazardous to your health.

I could take a sample of your water today, and with sensitive enough equipment find arsenic, mercury, lead, pesticide residues, radioactive materials, and all sorts of other scary-sounding chemicals in it.  They won't affect your health unless the concentration becomes high enough to create a physiologically-significant reaction.

Quoted:


Is there any truth to this? I've always equated it to NYC sewer alligators.

Quoted:







Yes, we did get the well tested every single year. Two years we had unusually high levels of something (I was young at the time) and the city forced the landfill to take some action (not sure what, I was probably 10 years old), and it got better.



I think maybe you have this idea that I'm some hypochondriac who actually worries about what is in my water. Its actually the opposite, I have a water filtration system and I'm confident in its performance, but I do believe that with matters like this, its better to err on the side of caution, that's all.

Quoted:







You can't back up such claims.

Just because there aren't immediate, obvious affects doesn't mean the long-term ingestion of a poupouri of man-made chemicals, even in minute quantities, doesn't have a health impact.



I'll agree that as far as priorities go, getting worked up about trace chemicals in your water supply is probably wasted time. But to say they absolutely don't matter... you can't prove that. Because it's never been proven.

Quoted:


Yes, I can.  There is no scientific evidence that exposure to trace amounts of chemicals creates a signficiant health hazard.

Quoted:


I fully agree with that rule, but this is a bit complicated:

The problem with flushing or burying medicines is that they end up in the water supply.

Do you have any idea how much prozac is floating around most city water supplies?  Its a lot more than I'm comfortable with.


 

Yes, I can.  There is no
scientific evidence that exposure to trace amounts of chemicals creates a
signficiant health hazard.  The idea that tiny amounts of "man-made"
chemicals can cause disease over time is nothing more than environmental
homoepathy.

Quoted:
I heard on the news that the gov considers prescription drug abuse worse than the crack epidemic of the 90's.  Just sayin.

Quoted:


Please (as a pharmacist) do not flush pills down the toilet. Just what you want, man boobs because grandma is flushing her estrogen pills into your water supply.

Crush or destroy the pills,  put in sealable container mixed with something that no one will want to be rifling through and toss with the trash.

 

Quoted:
I heard on the news that the gov considers prescription drug abuse worse than the crack epidemic of the 90's.  Just sayin.

Quoted:
Betcha drug dealers will just hang out outside the the door and offer the patients $ for the pills

Quoted:


Please (as a pharmacist) do not flush pills down the toilet. Just what you want, man boobs because grandma is flushing her estrogen pills into your water supply.

Crush or destroy the pills,  put in sealable container mixed with something that no one will want to be rifling through and toss with the trash.

 

Quoted:


Haha!  I worked this silliness last year, and it was rated as a great success because of the massive weight of "drugs" turned in.



Know what almost all of it was?



Expired vitamins, flu vaccine, Pedialyte, Robitussin, Tylenol, Neosporin, etc., mostly turned in by clinics, urgent care facilities, and the like, who were delighted to have a place to dispose of old meds free of charge.



It's a colossal joke.

Quoted:


I didn't say "flush them", I said throw them in the trash.

Quoted:


I knew I shouldn't have commented on this thread for fear awakening the fates.



Guess who just got called and told go in and handle this tomorrow?

Quoted:







Is there any truth to this? I've always equated it to NYC sewer alligators.

Quoted:









No, it does not.  A lined, properly-maintained landfill will keep them just fine.  But even then drugs will still go down the toilet because people excrete unmetabolized drugs every time they pee.

Quoted:
I knew I shouldn't have commented on this thread for fear awakening the fates.

Guess who just got called and told go in and handle this tomorrow?

Quoted:


Call me ignorant, but why is toilet water ending up in my drinking water? Do they fish the turds out and send it back to my sink?  

Quoted:
Yes, I can.  There is no scientific evidence that exposure to trace amounts of chemicals creates a signficiant health hazard.

More recent studies have further demonstrated the importance



of endocrine disruption in wildlife populations.



For example, marine gastropods exposed to tributyltins,



which leach from certain antifouling paints and PVC



pipes, experienced severe population declines and reproductive



disorders including imposex (development of



male sex characteristics in females) (Gibbs et al., 1991).



In some amphibian populations, supernumerary limbs



and missing limbs have been attributed to certain pesticides



and other anthropogenic chemicals (Ouellet et al.,



1997; Sparling, 2000). In particular, trace concentrations



of the widely used herbicide atrazine have been associated



with endocrine disruption in frogs from the Midwestern



United States (Hayes et al., 2002). Degradation



products from the widely used alkylphenol polyethoxylate



(APE) surfactants, which are ubiquitous contaminants



of wastewater treatment plant effluents, have been



shown to be estrogenic (Mueller and Kim 1978; White



et al, 1994; Routledge and Sumpter 1997; Giesy et al.,



2000) and bioaccumulative (Ahel et al., 1993; Liber et



al., 1999; Lye et al., 1999; Snyder et al., 2001a). In the



1990s, reports from the United Kingdom and the United



States indicated that fish living below wastewater treatment



plants had several reproductive abnormalities (Bevans



et al., 1996; Folmar et al., 1996; Harries et al., 1996;



Purdom et al., 1994; Jobling et al., 1998). These reproductive



abnormalities included changes in the levels of



sex steroids, gonadal histology (e.g., hemaphrodism and



intersex), and increased levels of the female egg yolk precursor,



vitellogenin, in male fish.



Collectively, these impacts



of wastewater effluent on male fish are referred to



as feminization because fish that are genetically male exhibit



female sex characteristics.

Quoted:
No one turns in the good stuff. This is why you only see broken high points and old single shot 12 gauge shotguns at gun buybacks.

Quoted:


Pretty much.

Never taken a tour of a waste water treatment plant?