Pharmacies to help reduce misuse
Businesses must provide safe disposal kits with opioid prescriptions
Pharmacies in Rensselaer County now have to provide a safe disposal product with each opioid prescription they dispense under a new local law that passed the County Legislature last month.
The law, which is intended to reduce opportunities for prescription pill misuse while providing users with an environmentally friendly disposal option, aims to curtail the supply of opioids on the street at a time when fatal opioid overdoses are climbing both locally and nationwide.
“We have heard story after story about opioids being accessed by a child or a relative, and sometimes leading to tragic outcomes,” said County Executive Steve Mclaughlin, who signed the legislation into law last week and held a news conference Friday to outline the details. “This is a simple and easy way to safely prevent opioids from getting taken by a child or others.”
While a number of municipalities have passed laws requiring drop boxes at pharmacies and other locations for people to safely dispose of unwanted drugs, Rensselaer County is the first county in the state to require pharmacies to provide safe disposal products each time they fill an opioid prescription.
Such products, which contain ingredients that deactivate the medication when combined with water and shaken, can be used right at home. The end product is able to be disposed of in the trash — and unlike flushing pills down the toilet does not contaminate water supplies or harm aquatic life.
“What we think is this is a law that has the potential to be adopted statewide,” Mclaughlin said.
Indeed, the executive director of the New York State Association of Counties, Stephen Acquario, joined Mclaughlin Friday to urge other counties around the state to follow
suit.
“We have a public health crisis,” he said. “We have to do something to get these opioids off the street to protect people from substance use disorder.”
Albany County has already followed Rensselaer County’s lead. Albany County Executive Dan Mccoy announced Friday that he had signed an executive order imposing the same requirements on pharmacies in his county, and urged the county Legislature to pass legislation in its place.
Mccoy said his hope is for the state to pass its own version as well.
“I was in the legislature when we passed no smoking in Albany County (and) helmet laws for scooters,” he said. “These are things that sometimes we have to address county by county. We wish we didn’t have to … but it sometimes gets done quicker.”
Rensselaer County will be requiring pharmacies to pick up the tab for the disposal products without passing the cost on to customers. Albany County will use opioid settlement funds to pay for the products, Mccoy said.
“We did get a lot of pushback from our pharmacists that were saying it’s another cost to them,” he said.
“It’s not a big cost,” he added. “But part of the lawsuit money coming in ... can be used for this, so we’ll use this to offset it.”
Both Albany and Rensselaer counties are on track to see record overdose deaths this year, county leaders confirmed.
Albany County recorded 99 fatal opioid overdoses last year — a 60 percent increase over 2019 and the most in a single year since the overdose epidemic began. Rensselaer County, which was averaging between 20 and 34 fatal overdoses a year in recent years, had 61 as of early December 2020.