Unused medication that might tempt addicts, accidentally poison children or pollute water supplies will be collected throughout the state today as part of the 11th annual National Drug Take-Back Day initiative.
A number of police departments in the area, including Concord, Bow, Franklin and Pembroke, will have collection boxes at departments in which any medication can be left, no questions asked, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Illegal drugs are not covered, however; a bill which would have allowed them to be deposited in New Hampshire without fear of prosecution did not pass the Legislature this year.
The twice-yearly Drug Take-Back Day was started in 2010 by the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, which targeted misuse of medication sitting in bathroom cabinets, and the issue has only grown in importance since then with the spread of overdose deaths due to opioid addiction. Last year almost 4,000 police departments and other institutions participated across the country, and three-quarters of a million pounds of unused medications were collected.
That total is just a small part of the nation’s medications, although there are no exact figures about the size of the issue.
Consider this: In 2014, 4.3 billion prescriptions were written in the U.S., according to federal data. Even if each prescription weighed just a single ounce, and even if 99 percent of all medication was taken as prescribed by the patient – and it’s estimated that as much as three-quarters of the time, people don’t use their entire prescription – there would still be 2.6 million pounds of medication left over that year which is more than twice as much as was collected in the two 2014 take-back days. That doesn’t include over-the-counter medications, which are far more common, according to statistics.
In New Hampshire, more than three tons of drugs were collected in the most recent Drug Take-Back Day for which data is available. Concord police regularly collect between 100 and 500 pounds of medication.
Another reason not to leave unused medications in the bathroom cabinet are accidents. More than 71,000 children aged 18 and younger are seen in emergency rooms annually for unintentional overdoses of prescription and over-the-counter drugs, according to the National Community Pharmacists Association.
And there are environmental reasons not to flush old drugs down the toilet or toss them in the trash, where they can leach into groundwater. More than 100 different drugs, including antibiotics, anticonvulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones, have been detected in drinking water supplies, partly because they are not removed by current wastewater treatment methods.
Drug Take-Back Day locations in Greater Concord include:
ALLENSTOWN POLICE DEPARTMENT, 40 ALLENSTOWN ROAD, SUNCOOK
BOW POLICE DEPARTMENT, 12 ROBINSON ROAD, BOW
CONCORD POLICE DEPARTMENT, 35 GREEN ST., CONCORD
HOPKINTON POLICE DEPARTMENT, 1696 HOPKINTON ROAD, CONTOOCOOK
FRANKLIN POLICE DEPT. – TILTON POLICE DEPT., CVS, 861 CENTRAL ST., FRANKLIN
LACONIA POLICE DEPARTMENT, 126 NEW SALEM ST., LACONIA
PEMBROKE POLICE DEPARTMENT, 247 PEMBROKE ST., PEMBROKE
PITTSFIELD POLICE DEPARTMENT, 59 MAIN ST., PITTSFIELD
(David Brooks can be reached at 369-3313 or dbrooks@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @GraniteGeek)
