Get rid of outdated drugs safely

F or nearly 16 months after my wife died, my bedroom closet was a depository for more than 50 vials of outdated drugs associated with treatment of her stage four ovarian cancer.

The heavy-duty painkillers she used in her final days, such as morphine, were disposed of by the hospice head nurse within an hour of her death, but the others were my responsibility.

I procrastinated until I saw an article in a newspaper that April 30 was National Prescription Drug Take-Back Day, so I took the drugs to a participating police department.

If you have outdated drugs in your possession, this Saturday is the perfect time to turn them in legally and anonymously. From 10 a.m. until 2 p.m., more than two dozen sites in Carbon, Schuylkill, Northampton, Monroe, Lehigh and Luzerne counties will be set up to take these drugs off your hands.

During the last program in April, the Drug Enforcement Administration, national sponsor of the program, and more than 4,200 of its state, local and tribal law enforcement partners, collected 893,498 pounds of unwanted medicines - about 447 tons - at almost 5,400 sites spread through all 50 states. This eclipsed its previous high of 390 tons in the spring of 2014 by 57 tons, or more than 114,000 pounds.

The majority of prescription drug-abusers report that they get their drugs from friends and family. Sometimes it is by consent, but, more often, it is by theft with the abusers finding vials of these drugs lying around medicine cabinets, night table drawers and elsewhere.

When we become proactive and dispose of these drugs appropriately, we are reducing or eliminating the chances of accidents and misuse and abuse of these medications, including the opioid painkillers that accounted for 20,808 drug overdoses, or 78 a day, in 2014, the last year for which complete statistics are available.

Eight of 10 new heroin users began by abusing prescription painkillers and moved to heroin when they could no longer obtain or afford these painkillers, according to information supplied by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The acting administrator of the DEA Chuck Rosenberg was euphoric about last April's results collection and is optimistic that Saturday's effort will be even more successful. "These results show that more Americans than ever are taking the important step of cleaning out their medicine cabinets and making homes safe from potential prescription drug abuse," he said.

We share Rosenberg's enthusiasm and urge readers to use this opportunity to make a difference. Take-back events such as these raise awareness of the opioid epidemic, which has become a major problem in our area, and offer the public a safe way to help prevent substance abuse.

There is some confusion over alternate forms of disposal. The Federal Drug Administration, for example, suggests that certain powerful medications, such as Fentanyl patches, can be flushed. Some question the practice of flushing because of concerns about trace levels of drug residues showing up in surface water and in some community drinking water supplies.

"The main way drug residues enter water systems is by people taking medicines and then naturally passing them through their bodies," said Dr. Raanan Bloom, an environmental assessment expert at the FDA. "Many drugs are not completely absorbed or metabolized by the body and can enter the environment after passing through wastewater treatment plants. While FDA and the Environmental Protection Agency take the concerns of flushing certain medicines in the environment seriously, there has been no indication of environmental effects due to flushing," Bloom says. Still, the FDA said it does not want to add drug residues into water systems unnecessarily.

Here are some nearby take-back locations in our area:

• Carbon: Summit Hill Police Department, 40 W. Amidon St.

• Schuylkill: Tamaqua Police Department, 320 Broad St.

• Luzerne: Pennsylvania State Police Troop N headquarters, 250 Dessen Drive, Hazleton.

• Lehigh: Redner's Market, 1201 Airport Road, Allentown. (Allentown police and Allentown Health Bureau will supervise the collection.)

• Monroe: Pocono Mountain Regional Police Headquarters, 2454 Route 940, Pocono Summit.

By Bruce Frassinelli | tneditor@tnonline.com