D.E.A. Effort to Curb Painkiller Abuse Falls Short at Pharmacies
When the Drug Enforcement Administration announced last year that pharmacies nationwide could accept and destroy customers’ unwanted prescription drugs, experts in substance abuse called it a significant step toward easing the painkiller and heroin epidemic.
One year later, however, the response has been insignificant, dismaying optimists and leaving communities searching for other strategies. Only about 1 percent of American pharmacies have set up disposal programs, with none of those belonging to the two largest chains, CVS and Walgreens, which have balked at the cost and security risks, according to government and industry data.
Countless unused prescription pills like oxycodone and Xanax linger in household medicine cabinets, in easy reach of addicted adults and experimenting adolescents. People who develop painkiller dependencies often move on to heroin, which is considerably cheaper and provides a stronger high. About 23,000 Americans died of prescription-drug overdoses in 2013, more than twice the number from 2001, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
Flushing unwanted medications down the toilet is legal but discouraged because they can pollute water sources; throwing them in household garbage that eventually reaches landfills creates similar environmental concerns.
The D.E.A. decided to allow retail pharmacies to collect unwanted drugs — generally in secure, mailboxlike receptacles — because the locations are convenient for the public and already feature safeguards for the medicines, some of which can be worth $40 per pill on the street. Pharmacies within hospitals and clinics are also eligible.
But participation is voluntary, and leaves pharmacies with the costs of collecting, safeguarding and incinerating the pills. In addition, at least eight states, including New York, have laws that forbid pharmacies to take back controlled substances.
A Walgreens spokesman said the company had not authorized any of its 8,200 locations to take back prescription drugs from customers. If someone asks to have unwanted medicine destroyed, he said, the store offers a do-it-yourself kit, for $3.99, in which the pills are mixed with water and other substances to render their contents inactive.
“We consider this the safest and most convenient way to dispose of unused medications,” the spokesman, James Graham, said in a statement.
Since 2010, the D.E.A. has held 10 so-called take-back days — with the latest on Sept. 26 — during which the police and other law enforcement groups encourage people to bring them unwanted medications for disposal. While these have collected 2,400 tons of pills, limited research suggests that the vast majority are noncontrolled medications like cholesterol drugs, antibiotics, and even aspirin and dietary supplements. One expert likened the effort to “trying to eliminate malaria in Africa by killing a dozen mosquitoes.”
A CVS spokesman, Michael DeAngelis, said the company did not allow its 7,800 pharmacies to accept controlled medications, although it held a pilot program at one of its stores. He would not disclose the location or results.
Mr. DeAngelis said CVS instead sought to address prescription drug abuse through other means. For example, it has expanded its program of selling naloxone, a medication that can avert opioid overdoses, to customers without a prescription. And it pays for receptacles, which cost about $800 each, that law enforcement officials use on the D.E.A.’s take-back days.
In some states, prescriptions for noncontrolled substances — those with vastly lower risks for misuse and addiction — are collected and redistributed to those in need. Social services officials in Tulsa, Okla., have about 20 retired doctors who retrieve surplus prescription drugs from dozens of area long-term-care facilities and take them to a pharmacy where they are checked, sorted and donated to low-income residents.
Begun in 2004, the program has filled 180,000 prescriptions worth more than $35 million retail. But it does not handle controlled substances.
“They have such value on the street,” said Linda J. Johnston, the director of Tulsa County Social Services. “It’s not unusual to hear on the news about a pharmacy being robbed. It’s something we wanted to sidestep.”
While Ms. Johnston said she understood pharmacies’ concerns about security, both in guarding drop boxes and transferring their contents to disposal facilities, she expressed some skepticism for those who balk at the cost of destroying the substances. The drugs collected during Tulsa’s D.E.A. take-back day, and in about 20 other locations nationwide, are incinerated free by the local plant of Covanta, the waste and energy company.
Several West Coast counties, including Alameda (which includes Oakland, Calif.) and King (which includes Seattle), have passed ordinances to require the source of prescription medications — drug companies — to underwrite and manage take-back programs. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the industry’s main trade association, sued Alameda County over its law, but lost in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The Supreme Court declined to review the case in May, and the program could become the first to begin operation next year.
Scott Cassel, the chief executive of the Product Stewardship Institute, a nonprofit environmental group, said manufacturers in other industries had been required to handle the disposal of their own environmentally harmful products. For example, mattress makers in Connecticut are responsible for disposing of discarded mattresses because they are expensive to destroy or recycle.
“The mattress people were understandably not enthusiastic about picking up the cost,” Mr. Cassel said, “but the idea is to protect the environment and to ask industries to handle the waste. Right now it’s the taxpayers.”
As for pharmacies, Mr. Cassel said that generally only small, independent locations had used the D.E.A.’s new guidelines to begin collecting controlled medications, partly out of civic responsibility but also as a means of getting more customers in the store.
The small number of participating pharmacies does not bode well for the future of the program, said Howard Weissman, the executive director of the St. Louis affiliate of the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence.
“People mean well and want to do the right thing, but in the same way we mean to bring our plastic bags back to grocery stores, we wind up just throwing them in the trash,” Mr. Weissman said of unused drugs. “Until we figure out how to get people to understand how dangerous this stuff can be, parents are going to keep stocking their medicine cabinets with loaded revolvers.”
Because of an editing error, an article on Sunday about a disposal system for unwanted prescriptions misstated, in some editions, part of the name of a group that has a St. Louis affiliate led by Howard Weissman, who commented on the practice. It is the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence (not Drug Abuse).
Filed under: General Problems
For many years Canadian pharmacies have been collecting unwanted drugs from the public. Each pharmacy is supplied with a large drum to hold the products. When the drum is full, a call is made to the government licensed collector, the drum is picked up and the product disposed of in an safe manner. The process is operated at no cost to the pharmacy and is government funded. This keeps all products out of landfills and the water supply as flushing of products is harmful to the Enviornment. No big deal! Why us everything so difficult in the USA.
Does anyone see the irony in this story ? I returned about 7 [Placebo plus side-effects, including 3 heavy metals]. I told you that a pharmacist I’ve never met told me before purchase “You Cannot Return This”. After so many [and growing], toxic and dangerous surreal experiences, and without a car for two years, I thought whose monitoring the garbage, metals, poisons, headaches, balance problems, and most recently and for the first time; SEVERE NEUROLOGICAL IMPAIRMENT. Thank God I have saved every prescription bottle for years since the “Shortage” A/K/A Obamacare began.
There are more drug manufacturers than I would have ever imagined.
One of these manufacturers produces “their” version of Dextroamphetmine Sulfate; they are also involved in the drilling & mining business in Dubi. Their advertisement online was both threatening and dark, making a mockery of how easy the capsule is to break-open and snort.
Besides being repulsive, immature, and bullying; they knew I was on their site and tried to scare me. As soon as I “recovered”, I brought that script [after one dose], back to the pharmacy. The pharmacist emphatically stated he was not going to give me my money back or accept the script back. I was so angry I could barely control myself.
He said “I’m only going to throw it in the garbage” I said: “I could care-less what you do with this toxic garbage; I am not taking this shit with me, you can keep the co-pay. I suggest you send it back to your manufacturer and ship it back on the GLOBAL HOLOCAUSTIC PIPELINE. I bought it here, I return it here.
This is insane. Just the fact that the Government has an “Anonymous” drop-off mailbox down the road from the police station is outrageous and insulting. It’s painful how many people in the “Health-Care field have sold their souls and have aligned themselves with the abusers. And none of them are telling the truth. These foul, harmful, disgusting frankenmeds are and have caused damage to every part of me. Now they offered me a “NON STIMULANT STIMULANT called Straterra. It’s hard on the liver, makes me a sliver wakeful w/o the focus energy and endurance. All of these strange unnatural bio-waste experiments along with the big secret that no-ones supposed to know is that TWC, Verizon, Rand and how they brag about “People don’t like it when we spy on them in the bathroom and bedroom. Nothing like torturing a woman in her own apartment, taking pictures. The military makes it legal by sending the info to another country where it’s analyzed by some neurologist, interpreted with a negative or positive “CHARGE” then sent back. This makes American spying on poor and sick legal. But they won’t give me my adequate pain and brain medicine. I need to write Erin Brocovitch. “They” passed a law that the public/commons don’t have a right to know if the salmon we ingest is genetically modified. Erin Brocovitch, Gerry Spence need to know because we need help. Now they are isolating and destroying. They stole Wilhelm Reich’s work, the German man who created the REIFE machine was assasinated, Tesla……..
I’m beginning to experience neurological problems for over a week. I now have osteoporosis among other things. There is something very off and damaging in these meds. I’m in a class system I can’t get out of because no one will admit it, and I can’t fight this lonely battle while being constantly exposed to where I can’t think, remember, articulate. my nervous system is being stripped-apart.
Why isn’t there any oversite on these meds ? Why cant anyone analyze this garbage ???
I am calling office of the aging Bob said I can go to a compounding pharmacy for my stimulant and pain meds. Somehow I don’t believe it
I wonder, how many of those drugs scored through take-back programs end up in the hands of law enforcement, who then sell them in the underground market?
I responded to the previous post; I think by pharmacist Steve about these “anonymous drop-off boxes” Shouldn’t someone be wondering why anyone would throw into a box the very same drugs that are in “shortage”, are inserted with nano-radio active and glow in the dark vapors, heavy metals, and/or cut by up to 40% of the “active” ingredient ?
It’s already been reported that DEA employees have tested positive for “illegal” drugs and receive a slap on the wrist. Many times in many states confiscated drugs by police officers have “Disappeared”.
My issue, death sentence, QOL never-ending hope is that I have chronic-illness and was able to contribute, volunteer, and incorporate additional alternative and life-strengthening practices. It’s good for my soul to help others. But when my life purpose and basic functioning is secretly and illegally taken from me without any notice, warning, or reason, and all the non profit agencies who are paid to help us shrug their shoulders and say they can help us find a job, or offer me a job working for/with them, it’s laughable.
I pray every day that a miracle will happen and I will wake-up healthy. I would love nothing more than to be free from the two medications that help me function normally.
I wouldn’t be surprised if I chose medical mj for my multiple pain issues, [as I hear it’s now legal in N.Y.], that my insurance would give me the worse synthetic chewable stuff there is and I would have to return it. I wonder how they grade the many flavors, strengths and target affects ? If I didn’t have severe ADHD and the weed was tailored just for pain relief and did not make me feel like a total space-cadet with an insatiable appetite, I would try it; I certainly qualify.
What does it say to pharmacist Steve and others that about 4 years ago, in N.Y. that the government made a back door deal with the pharmacies giving them immunity from death or injury from certain medications as they themselves didn’t know what was in them.
I asked 6 unrelated pharmacists “Is it true that you have received government immunity due to lawsuits as a result of medication related death or injury as you-yourself do not know what’s in what you’re prescribing ? All 6 said YES.
Throughout history this theme has played-out time & time again.
I told everyone how I feel. I know by the way I, my sister, and many others from all walks of life are treated. The doctors are both threatened and brainwashed.
We are in a Global Pendemic. See ILADS= International Lyme and associated Disease Society. See Lorraine Johnson, a lawyer who won against the CDC in CT for suppressing 20 years worth of research. I will never hit the Street. If I can’t have a life with 3 chronic illnesses, I would rather die. This is an oligarchy, a Hierarchy, a TOTALITARIAN GLOBAL and TECHNOLOGICAL Genocide for SOME.
I want my life back.
I’m sorry you’re suffering, Joy, and I wish I could help you. Just know that I’m listening.