Chances are if you open the medicine cabinet in your home you will find prescription medication no one in your household is currently using. Maybe you didn’t need all of the pain killers you were prescribed when you had oral surgery or maybe your child switched from one ADHD medication to another. Why should you take a moment to take a look and safely dispose of unnecessary medications?
The teen years are full of experimentation and many teens believe that prescription drugs are safer than other kinds of drugs. Nonmedical use of prescription drugs is dangerous, and many teens who report prescription drug misuse say they got the medication from family and friends, including from their home medicine cabinets.
How can we combat this problem?
Education:
Talk with your teen about the dangers of prescription drug misuse. Remind them that although medication is beneficial when used as prescribed, misuse can have serious health consequences and may even be lethal. Prescription drugs commonly misused by teens include Adderall and other ADHD medications, tranquilizers and opiods. (https://www.drugabuse.gov/related-topics/trends-statistics/infographics/monitoring-future-2017-survey-results)
Monitor Your Medications:
Make sure you keep the prescription drugs in your home safe and secure. Consider buying a lockbox for certain types of medications like stimulants, sleep aids and painkillers. Keep track of quantities of all medications so that you can quickly identify misuse.
Dispose of Old or Unused Medications:
Clean out your medicine cabinets and take old or unused medications to a proper drug collection location. Once it was common practice to flush these pharmaceuticals down the toilet. Your doctor or pharmacist may have directed you to do this. We now know that these substances are bad for our environment if improperly disposed. Many drug stores and police stations have drug collection stations. Here in New Castle we are fortunate to have a permanent safe and easy solution for the disposal of old or unused medications – the MedReturn Drug Collection Unit located in the Town of New Castle Police Station, 200 South Greeley Avenue.
For more information see
https://www.dea.gov/documents/2015/12/18/prescription-disaster
