Day set to return medicine

  • Published
  • 60th Air Mobility Wing Public Affairs
TRAVIS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. --  The pharmacy staff of David Grant U.S. Air Force Medical Center and the Drug Enforcement Agency will partner up once again to host another round of the National Prescription Drug Take-Back Day initiative. Travis Golden Bears can join Americans nationwide in showing their support for the DEA's program by dropping off any old or expired medications that they are no longer using.

All unused or expired drugs can be turned in Sept. 27 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Exchange mini mall. A drop box will be set up outside the entrance near Starbucks. The collection will be monitored by two members of the 60th Security Forces Squadron during that time.

"Prescription drug abuse is becoming epidemic, said Capt. Charla Watson, 60th Medical Group chief of infusion services flight at DGMC. "While no one wants to throw away 'good medication,' if you no longer have the condition it was prescribed to treat, then it is not 'good medication.' Using a pain medication that was prescribed for you, but for another injury is misusing the medication and no one wants that if they have to visit Drug Demand Reduction."

After seven previous Take-Back Days spread over almost four years, a record 780,158 pounds or 390 tons of pills were brought to 6,072 collection sites April 26. The DEA and its 4,423 state, local and tribal law enforcement partners set up the collection sites so the public could discard unwanted, unused and expired prescription drugs from medicine cabinets, bedside tables and kitchen drawers. 

When added to previous DEA-coordinated Take-Back events, 4.1 million pounds or 2,123 tons of prescription medications have been removed from circulation.

"The DEA's National Prescription Drug Take-Back events provide an obviously needed and valued service to the public, while also reducing prescription drug abuse and trafficking," said Michele Leonhart, DEA administrator. "By taking these medications off their hands, our citizens know they have made their own families and communities safer.  We continue to work toward making the process for disposing of controlled substance medications by users and their caregivers even easier by creating regulations that will enable the public to regularly, safely, and conveniently dispose of such medicines when they are no longer needed or wanted."

The National Prescription Drug Take-Back Day aims to provide a safe, secure, and environmentally responsible means of disposing of prescription drugs, while also educating the general public about the potential for abuse and trafficking of medications. This is important because the nonmedical use of controlled substance medications is at an all-time high, with 6.8 million Americans reporting having abused prescription drugs in 2012, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's National Survey on Drug Use and Health released in 2013. 

That same study revealed more than 54 percent of people who abuse 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 Obama administration's strategy for preventing prescription drug abuse and trafficking, which also includes 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.

Take-Back Days are presently needed because the Controlled Substances Act as originally written did not provide a way for patients, caregivers and pet owners to dispose of such medications as painkillers, sedatives, and stimulants like attention deficit hyperactivity disorder drugs.  People were flushing their old medications down the toilet or throwing them in the trash.

The DEA launched its first Take-Back event in September 2010, after which the President signed the Secure and Responsible Drug Disposal Act of 2010, which amended the CSA to allow people, including residents of long term care facilities, to regularly, conveniently and safely dispose of their CS medications by delivering them to entities authorized by the Attorney General to accept them.

The DEA is in the process of finalizing regulations to implement the act, publishing on Dec. 21, 2012, a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on the Disposal of Controlled Substances that presented possible disposal options.