Prescription Drug Take Back Day
By Albert B. Kelly
Sometimes it’s hard to keep track of all the various days or
weeks that are set aside to focus our attention on a specific issue or group.
Part of the challenge is the sheer number of such national observances. There’s
everything from National Pig Day and National Donut Day to Paper Airplane Day,
Fried Chicken Day, and National Honey Bee Day. The day after Thanksgiving, in
addition to being “Black Friday”, is also “Buy Nothing Day” and the National
Day of Listening. Go figure.
But somewhere between donuts and paper airplanes I missed
the fact that April 27th was National Prescription Drug Take Back
Day (https://takebackday.dea.gov/ ).
It matters because according to the U.S Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), a
National Survey on Drug Use and Health showed that upwards of 6 million of our fellow
citizens misused or abused controlled prescription drugs in 2017. The research
showed that the bulk of these controlled drugs came from the medicine cabinets
of family members and friends.
In some instances those medicine cabinets may have been the
place where the problem got started. On the other hand, those medicine cabinets
may be the place you go next when you’ve already got that particular monkey on
your back and things are already somewhat out of control, but you’ve not quite taken
to the streets yet to keep from getting dope sick.
If you’ve not experienced that particular problem, that’s a good
thing, but it can also make it easy to render some harsh judgements about those
who have. If we go with old stereotypes, something I struggle to avoid, we’ll tend
to think of the addicted as lazy weak-willed losers. But I remind myself often that
the ranks of the addicted include doctors, lawyers, clergy members, truck
drivers, athletes, blue collar workers, honor students, business executives and
everyone in between.
Part of why that is true is because today’s opioid crisis came
courtesy of the pharmaceutical companies and Purdue Pharma in particular. You
might recall that back in the 1990’s and into the 2000’s, Purdue Pharma, the
inventor of OxyContin, went hard at doctors with the idea that their time-released
product was non-addictive if used for pain according to the label and that doctors
had to lighten up when it came to prescribing relief to hurting patients. This became
the “new normal” in pain management. Prescribing pills was also easier on
health insurers’ bottom line as opposed to costlier long term therapies.
Whether it was a high school student injured playing sports
after school, a construction worker injured at the job site, a soccer mom who
got hurt exercising at the gym and required knee surgery or a business
executive passing a kidney stone, they went to the doctor as any of us would,
and came away with a prescription for pain medication. That new normal is a
large part of how the average American medicine cabinet became part of our
current opioid crisis and why it is necessary to have a National Prescription
Drug Take Back Day.
Prior to April 27th, the last National Take Back
Day was in October of last year. That effort saw 914,236 lbs. of prescription
drugs collected at 5,839 collection sites- some 457 tons worth. According to
the DEA, since 2010, they’ve collected just under 11 million pounds of
prescription drugs. It’s not clear how much of that was opioids, but the
problem also involves medications like Xanax, Adderall, and Ritalin.
In addition to keeping these medications from becoming part
of the stats on overdose, misuse, or abuse, the National Take Back effort also
keeps all sorts of medications, including antibiotics, from being flushed down
the toilet which ultimately means keeping them out of our water supply. But
that’s a separate discussion for another day.
While April 27th is behind us, Bridgeton can
participate in the next National Take Back Day. More importantly, residents in
the greater Bridgeton area can dispose of expired, unused, or unwanted
prescription medications throughout the year at the Bridgeton Police Department
located at 330 Fayette Street. There is a container in the lobby that is safe
and available to any member of the public. Bridgeton Rite Aid has also recently
installed a disposal container at their pharmacy counter as well.
We had roughly 72,000 overdose deaths in the U.S in 2017 and
I can’t help but think that for many, the path that led there started by opening
a medicine cabinet.