Ditch Your Legal Drug Stash This Saturday on Take-Back Day

Prescription drug abuse has reached epidemic proportions and it’s an epidemic that spreads from every bathroom medicine cabinet. You can help slow it down by getting rid of unused prescription drugs safely this Saturday. More than 6 million people abuse prescription drugs and nearly 80 percent of them didn’t have valid prescriptions for those drugs. Most got them from friends or family, either freely given or stolen from a medicine cabinet.  So even if you don’t intend to abuse your prescription drugs, that’s not stopping anyone from taking what they want to get high. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) came up with “The Take-Back” campaign as a response to the prescription drug problem in our country.

Taking a Look at “The Take-Back”

The DEA created “Take-Back” Day for people to safely dispose of all expired and unused prescription drugs. The DEA works with local law enforcement agencies to collect prescription drugs. Different locations are set up to collect the drugs and dispose of them safely while educating people on prescription drug abuse. The DEA does this several times a year and the next drug disposal day is Saturday, April 27, 2013. Find a location near you on the DEA website. On the first Take-Back Day in 2010, officials collected more than 242,000 lbs of prescription drugs. Since the first year, more than 2 million lbs of prescription drugs have been collected.

The Do’s and Don’ts of Taking It Back

Take-Back Day eliminates the problems of safe disposal. Throwing out or flushing unused drugs can harm the water supply, animals or anyone who can find them in your trash. Leaving them lying around the house makes them accessible to children or people who may struggle with addiction. Crushing the medicine before throwing it in the garbage is also unsafe. It can endanger people who are handling your trash. Although in powder form, the medicine can give a person a high dose and potentially cause an overdose. Animals are also in danger of being poisoned by the drugs. Although there are many locations participating in Take-Back Day, there might not be locations everywhere. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has provided instructions on how to dispose of prescriptions drugs safely.

• Do not crush the medicine.
• Mix medicine with items such as cat litter or coffee grounds.
• Put the mixture of medicine and inedible items in a bag and throw them away in the trashcan.

The Goal of “The Take-Back”

Safe prescription drug disposal makes it harder for prescription drug addicts to get their next high. However, their drug-seeking behavior and their drive to feel the addiction won’t let them off so easily. This initiative brings these people struggling with addiction one step closer to drug addiction treatment. Lakeview Health offers medically supervised detox and addiction rehab to those struggling with prescription drug addiction. You don’t have to be dependent on pills any longer. Call us today and get started on your treatment.