This is so exciting to me! I forced my sister into rehab because of a prescription drug addiction. After we confiscated her pill hoard, I tried to dispose of it. I finally made a cocktail of pills in a bottle of water. I wrapped it up a million times inside plastic and paper bags and tossed it in my trash. AT THE RECOMMENDATION of our local hospital and two pharmacies. I couldn't believe it. First they said to flush them but I am on a septic and refused.

I shredded patches in my paper shredder. It was crazy. I tried to donate the unopened boxes to Hospice. They could not take them.

If anyone has been in this position before, you know what a welcome relief this program is. These meds are showing up in our drinking water!! It's about time.

There is a new initiative here by the medical community in MD. for disposal. Pharmacists and hospitals still think flushing all drugs is appropriate. Apparently there are a few drugs that are too dangerous not to flush- that is the only acceptable method at this time.I think the info is online.
But for the others the pills/capsules are to be crushed and then mixed with coffee grounds or sawdust and placed in zipcloc bags and put in the trash.
I am not sure I will do this because we have racoons that get in the trash and goldens will eat just about anything I already know they eat advil = $$$$.
As for the takeback program there are liability issues that need to be addressed here in MD so the best recourse is the crush/mix/ zip program

Oh just remembered the rational behind trashing rather than flushing is that most landfills are now lined and prevent seepage into water supply.

This is wonderful news. Pharmacies in Europe have been doing this for years. I'm so glad we are finally catching on!

I have a lot of medications that I refuse to flush or throw out & have been waiting for a way to safely dispose of them.

With my pain meds; if something new does not work, I have to bring the whole script back to my doc who flushes it right in front of my face. The last time that happened was a year or so ago. I'll have to ask him if he participates with a program like this.

I don't remember when it hit me that flushing pills can't be good for anyone.. one wonders if there is a relation to all the cancers we have; things like autism, bipolar, dementia. Makes me wonder if we've been poisoning ourselves.

Once I accumulate a bunch of meds that either didn't work, or I have a bad reaction to, whatever, I crush the pills or capsules (I have a coffee grinder I picked up at a thrift store for a dollar and marked it NO FOOD), mix up a batch of plaster of paris (about $3 for a quart-size container that makes a s***load), mix in the meds, and dump the whole mess in a plastic container that wasn't recyclable anyway. I put it in a safe location to dry into a brick, duct-tape the heck out the package and when one of the hazmat disposal days (most of the towns I've lived in had one or two days a year where you could bring hazardous waste to the landfill, DPW, or somewhere like that for safe disposal) comes around I drop it off there. Cleared this with my doctors, most of whom normally just flushed it, because it is totally unacceptable to me to put this sort of material in the water system. (Bad enough you don't metabolize everything, so it ends up in the water system via, well, your personal water system. LOL) One time I had gotten the date wrong and had like 2 hours to get to the disposal site - found a quarter can of some horrible solvent (the kind of thing that makes straight acetone look like koolaid but is right on the shelf at Home Depot) in the garage so I dumped my leftover meds in there and glued the cap on with fast-set epoxy!

When I was a patient at one clinic our instructions were to put everything that would fit - syringes, lancets, patches, pills, the whole works - into a sharps container and when it was full, seal it closed (yay duct tape) and take it to the doctor's office to put in with the biohazard materials for disposal. My newest batch of syringes has these weird retracting needles, once the injection's done the needle pops back up into the body of the syringe, but they're still going to go into the sharps container. They cost $5-10 at the pharmacy but a lot of doctors just give them away.

It really is a valuable program, we've been doing it awhile in Canada also. When my Dad passed away back in February I packaged up all of his unused drugs & medications in a large zip-lock bag, and handed it back to the lady at the prescription counter at a local pharmacy. I just told her that my Dad had passed away and these were his drugs for disposal.... She just said 'thank you very much' - no questions, no hassle. Totally stress & thought free at a time when there's enough stress to begin with.

Plus it helps to keep these drugs out of the groundwater & water treatment facilities. I read an article awhile back about testing the water supply in some municipalities, and that some tested positive for trace elements of estrogen, penicillin, etc. Makes sense when you think about how much of this stuff is probably flushed in the run of a year.

This reminded me of my "crazy like a fox" Aunt who was a fierce advocate for kidney disease patients. She ran a prescription medicine "redistribution program" for kidney patients who couldn't afford their meds. Surely there was something verrry illegal about what she did but nobody stopped her.

She sadly died as a result of complications from her third kidney transplant in fall of 2008.

Here is a link that might be useful: My Aunt Alexis in the LA Times

Thanks for the information. We have a collection of odds & ends that I can now get rid of since there is a pharmacy near me.

I just did a locator search and found the nearest participating pharmacy is 112 miles away from me. Now I am wondering how to get a local pharmacy to participate in the program. I live in a major retirement community so there's bound to be lots of unused prescription medications floating around.

According to the website linked above, every single day 250,000 teens are getting high on prescription meds. Yikes!!

So that pharmacies can make more $$$ when you get a prescription for the same med a year later but can't use the ones you already had because you tossed them or gave them back? Although the expiry date on Rx drugs is usually listed as one year beyond when it was filled, *most* meds remain safe and retain full potency years beyond that. I'm also afraid some rogue pharmacies might resell the more expensive returned pills as new and pocket the difference (I wouldn't put that above one I've dealt with).

My old roommate did have someone steal his nearly-full bottle of Adderall, but this program won't stop that from happening.

I'm pretty sure it's legal to give your old prescription drugs to others who have been prescribed the same drug (some of my prescriptions are emblazoned with a warning that this is illegal, but those are just the controlled substances like Ambien). Some of my pills cost from $18 to $40 each (Zofran ODT). No way I'm flushing them down the toilet.

I dispose of my out-of-date meds in a safe manner, like some posters above. Never have flushed or put them into our water system. When I first read this link I was skeptical, or rather cynical as to where these meds may end up.

Did check out the link provided by roselvr, and like golddust, no pharmacies in my area currently participate in this program. The NCPA is composed of small independent pharmacies and we just don't have many of those where we live.

Have to say that I have some similar concerns as expressed by lee676 in returning controlled substances to a pharmacy. While there are many regulations with regard to the dispensing of those type of meds, the NCPA link does not provide any info regarding any regulations with regard to their acceptance of unused medications, either controlled or not. I wonder how that would work.

Also, I noticed that NCPA has a PAC that accepts donations for those who wish to support them as well. I think I want to investigate the NCPA's PAC a bit further before I try to enlist those small pharmacies in my area to participate. Until then I will continue to dispose of our unused or out-of-date meds via the method I've always used. Lee676 is correct about the one year expiration date printed on your medication label. I have a box of Tamiflu prescribed to DH in 11/2006 with an expiration of 11/2007 on the label. However, the expiration date imprinted on the box is 10/2010. Tamiflu is another expensive medication especially if you do not carry pharmacy insurance coverage. Why dispose of a perfectly good medication. In the event you need it again before the true expiration date, you pay for the med twice.

I don't know that it is even legal for this practice to take place here. That may be why the CVS, Walgreens, Rite Aids, etc. pharmacies do not participate? When my old gal was put down, I tried to donate all of her meds back to our vet practice for patients who were unable to afford medications. They could not take them back. Many were meds that were in unopened sealed packaging? The local shelters would not take them either.

Years back when my DGF passed, his family physician came to our home (I was a wee one, so we're going back quite some time) to collect all of my DGF's leftover meds. Many of the meds were strong narcotic pain-type medications. I wonder to this day about his motivation.

Personally, I didn't say nuffin' about just plain being out of date (although three years past max date OR smelling/looking not-right is my personal limit). I'm talking ones that caused very serious side effects or outright allergic reactions, or just plain didn't do crapola for my symptoms either alone or in cocktails.I should keep these why? A lot of what I take are verrrrry dangerous to the ignorant - as in could kill you if you don't know what you're doing - which is why I am so careful about disposal and store them in a safe. I don't think anyone's going to grind up a yogurt container full of plaster and snort it, y'know?

"I'm pretty sure it's legal to give your old prescription drugs to others who have been prescribed the same drug"

Not true. It is illegal to give any prescription medications to another person whether they have been prescribed the same med or not.

Let's talk expiration date. Drugs are made from chemicals. Chemicals can breakdown mostly due to environmental conditions. When you open a bottle of pills you are letting moisture in. Many pills have salt chemical such as Sodium phosphate which adsorb water/moisture. So everytime you open the bottle you are exposing the pills to environmental conditions. That's why there are expiration dates. Usually expiration dates can be taken out a little further such as 2-3 months.

I used to sell USP grade chemicals which are pharmaceutical grade.