Senator proposing to charge drug companies for unused pills
http://wwlp.com/2015/12/03/senator-proposing-to-charge-drug-companies-for-unused-pills/
STATE HOUSE, BOSTON, DEC. 3, 2015…..The state would be able to bill pharmaceutical companies for unused drugs turned in by patients and put the proceeds toward addiction treatment and recovery programs, under a bill now before lawmakers.
The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Daniel Wolf, told the Joint Committee on Public Health Thursday that his legislation would require a new degree of responsibility and accountability from drug companies as the state grapples with rising rates of overdose and addiction.
“There’s no intent, from my perspective, that the pharmaceutical companies are intentionally creating addiction,” said Wolf, a Harwich Democrat. “I wouldn’t go that far. But I think one of the solutions we haven’t talked nearly enough about in this building is what role the pharmaceutical companies can play and should play in preventing and treating the problems that their drugs are really a very important part of creating.”
Wolf’s bill would expand upon existing drug take-back centers voluntarily set up in some communities, often at police stations, by calling upon the Department of Public Health to establish collection and disposal sites that could be easily accessed from all regions of the state.
The collection points would include technology to identify and catalog each pill before they were destroyed. That information could then be used to prepare an invoice that would be sent to the drug’s manufacturer. Money received through the buyback program would be deposited in a dedicated fund for substance abuse services.
“We know that we are falling way short in the ability to pay for these programs, and this would create a revenue stream,” Wolf said.
A substance-abuse prevention bill passed by the Senate in October (S 2020) contains a provision similar to Wolf’s program, calling for drug manufacturers to operate or participate in a collection and disposal program.
A national trade group representing pharmaceutical companies opposes Wolf’s bill, arguing that drug collection sites could potentially create new venues for drug misuse by establishing one public location where pills are aggregated and could be stolen.
“They would be known sites in the community where people could go to access drugs,” said Leslie Wood, deputy vice president of Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. “We don’t believe it’s secure.”
Wood’s organization, known as PhRMA, does not object to drug disposal sites run by law enforcement agencies, she said.
In general, Wood said, PhRMA would prefer to see patients throw out unused medications with their regular trash, because they can get rid of them immediately instead of making a special trip or waiting for a dedicated take-back day.
“We don’t want patients to hold on to their unused medicines,” she said. “We want them to take them as they’re prescribed, secure them in your house, know what you have in your house, and when you don’t need them anymore dispose of them in your household trash.”
Of various proposals raised recently to combat opioid abuse, several have targeted the issue of unwanted medication that could be subject to misuse.
The Senate’s opioid bill also includes a measure allowing patients to request that a pharmacist only partially fill a prescription for certain drugs, while a bill filed by Gov. Charlie Baker would limit the supply of opioids doctors could initially prescribe a patient.
Elected officials have also voiced support for an initiative led by the Safe Homes Coalition, a California-based nonprofit, encouraging homeowners to safeguard and hide their prescription drugs before welcoming visitors for events like real estate open houses.
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Copyright 2015 State House News Service
Filed under: General Problems
I don’t know Steve, every time I leave you or someone else a reply, some entity makes it disappear.
How well do you think a statement like this would go over?
“There’s no intent, from my perspective, that the gun manufacturers are intentionally creating gun violence,” said Wolf, a Harwich Democrat. “I wouldn’t go that far. But I think one of the solutions we haven’t talked nearly enough about in this building is what role the gun manufacturers can play and should play in preventing and treating the problems that their guns are really a very important part of creating.”
The suggestion of throwing expensive and dangerous medications in the trash doesn’t really account for the fact that the Earth isn’t able to dispose of Big Pharma products, either. Trash and waste are recycled, and all those medications are recycled with it. Unfortunately, science hasn’t come up with a way to filter out all the drugs that we take.
Any good wastwater treatment will dilute the drugs down to within EPA acceptable limits. My dad is a toxicologist and he and other toxicologists buddies feel if the environmentalist wackos really have issues, then we need to go back to outhouses or every person needs get rid of indoor plumbing and our bodily waste goes into red hazmat bags which are picked up and burned. Seriously, you never ever hear how much of the waste products are from what patients are taking themselves and excreting. It’s always about the pills. I believe the leftover pills are far less than what is being excreted by patients. Just my 2 cents
I’m not going to pretend to understand the recycling process, but when I worked at a waste company, I learned a lot about what they can and cannot filter. For instance, since hundreds of fracking fluids are proprietary information, waste plants can’t test for or detect certain chemicals. And I found it interesting that the anti-drug groups have been testing for drugs in the wastewater near college campuses, which tells the researchers which drugs are being used.
Although many people still rely on agencies like the CDC and the EPA to determine and warn the public about what is hazardous, some people understand that the corruption and collusion of these agencies with the industries they are supposed to police doesn’t always result in the best scientific decisions and policy.
As for worrying about leftover pills, that’s just a distraction. Sure, leftover pills in the drug supply is a concern, but most of the diversion is happening on a much bigger scale.
DUMB ASS!
Maybe we should start charging him for unused brain cells.
This is crap!!
Beautiful choice of false alternatives here.
The patient, who pays for the medicine, owns the medicine.
The next time the patient needs the medicine, she has already learned that the medicine works…it was her doctor’s job to teach her what medicine she needed…he taught her and she paid him. So she has the knowledge. And she has the medicine. And she’s able to use it.
I can imagine why a shyster doctor would want to lie to the woman and tell her she must pay him another $75 for an office visit, to tell her she needs to take the medicine again.
I can imagine why a shyster drug company would want her to throw the medicine away and buy more of it.
What I never realized, is that there were politicians who cannot add and subtract.
Mister Wolf wants to double the price of medicine, so that when we buy the medicine, we pay extra money into a fund that pays to destroy the unused medicine, that the shyster doctor wants us to scrap so we come back and pay him $75 each time we need to take it. And then some of that double-the-price money gets put into another fund, to pay quack “counselors” to “treat” people for alleged “addictions”.
Mister Wolf needs to be asked one question.
From where are we supposed to get this extra money he wants to charge us?
Maybe next time this politician comes door-to-door asking us for campaign money, someone will figure out to mug him…and he’ll realize that getting forced to pay extra money to somebody, just makes people feel miserable.