Bags to allow easy disposal of drugs
A third of first-time drug users used prescription drugs — often taken from a relative’s medicine cabinet, a 2010 national study showed.
To try to discourage that, Franklin County’s Alcohol, Drug and Mental Health Board is spending $20,000 on a safe and easy way to get rid of those medicines, including opioids.
“We need you to go through your medicine cabinet and decrease our active supply of opioids,” said David Royer, head of Franklin County ADAMH.
Expired or unused drugs, especially opioids, aren’t supposed to be flushed down the drain because they pass through sewage-treatment facilities and can pollute the environment. Some communities and police stations have places where the prescription drugs can be dropped off for disposal.
Another way to get rid of prescription drugs, especially opioids, is to mix them in used cat litter or coffee grounds. But that doesn’t always prevent users craving the drug from digging through the litter to get to it.
Now, Franklin County’s ADAMH board is spending $20,000 on 5,000 bags that contain a material that, when mixed with water, deactivates the drugs. The bags can then be safely thrown in the trash.
The bags contain a special carbon that bonds to pharmaceutical compounds to deactivate a drug’s ingredients, the manufacturer says. The bags are approved by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, said Aimee Shadwick, ADAMH spokeswoman.
Within weeks, ADAMH plans to start giving the bags to the Franklin County Public Health and Columbus Public Health departments so those agencies can distribute them during training on how to correctly administer naloxone, the drug that can revive someone who has overdosed on opioids.
“Not everyone can use a (naloxone) kit, but everyone can use these bags,” Shadwick said.
The bags can neutralize prescriptions drugs in quantities of up to 45 pills or six patches or 6 ounces of liquid.
“We just don’t treat (disposal of) medicine in the medicine cabinet like we do other things,” Shadwick said.