Dispose of Prescription Medicines

By Hannah Brinkley

My grandmother accumulated a large amount of medications that she had no use for anymore. She didn’t know how to dispose of them properly but had heard from a friend about a way that she could get rid of them at police stations. She isn’t the only one who doesn’t know what to do with leftover or expired medicine.

So when I was starting to think about a topic for my Girl Scouts Gold Award project, I realized that helping educate the community about how to dispose of prescription medications would be a worthwhile effort. I visited the Lorton Center for Active Adults, and no one I spoke to there knew how to dispose of medicine correctly. I told them that medicine can be disposed from home by throwing it out after diluting it with cat litter or used coffee grounds in a sealed container.

Another great opportunity coming up is the National Prescription Drug Take Back Day, sponsored by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, and supported locally by the Unified Prevention Coalition of Fairfax County (UPC) and its partners. The next take-back day will be Saturday, Sept. 27 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. You can find a list of local drop-off locations on UPC’s website, or you can go the www.dea.gov for other sites.

Disposing of medication properly helps our community in a few ways. Not flushing medicine down the toilet or simply throwing it out reduces the amount of chemicals exposed to the environment. This also lowers chances of contaminants in our water supply.

We also help reduce the risk of prescription drug abuse, which is a growing problem in our country, especially among teens and young adults. By getting rid of medicine, people are less likely to find large quantities and consume them on purpose. Even by accident, children might consume medicine that is not out of reach.

This is an important issue because medicine is very common in households, and it is important that it can be disposed of correctly. And it is a good idea to secure needed medications. The nonprofit UPC suggests that parents and grandparents consider a lockbox for that purpose (visit www.rxarmory/UPCFC). According to the National Institute of Drug Abuse, the majority of both teens and young adults obtain prescription drugs they abuse from friends and relatives, sometimes without their knowledge.

Part of my Gold Award project involved helping distribute a great fact card on prescription medicines developed by the Unified Prevention Coalition that includes disposal information and facts about the prescription abuse problem. I took the cards to local pharmacies and doctor’s offices, handed them out at the Kingstowne Center for Active Adults, and also with 18 volunteers left one for each of the 476 homes in my neighborhood.

UPC has fact cards available if you know a place to share the information. (The card is available here.)

Hopefully, one day, this information will be more widely known than it is now, and I am glad that my project made an effort toward this.

Hannah Brinkley, 16, is a junior at South County High School. Hannah’s efforts are part of her project for the Gold Award, the highest achievement in Girl Scouting, similar to the Eagle Scout Award for the Boy Scouts. UPC leaders served as her project advisors.

The Unified Prevention Coalition of Fairfax County is a nonprofit organization with more than 60 community partners working together to keep youth and young adults safe and drug-free. Visit www.unifiedpreventioncoalition.org and www.facebook.com/unifiedpreventioncoalition. Follow the group on Twitter at www.twitter.com/keepyouthsafe.