Word Count: 447 - Read Time: 2.2 minutesMedical Waste DisposalEver wonder what happens to all those medical drugs that haven't been used? A patient dies or his/her requirements change along with the prescription or what about the drugs that expired on the shelves of the pharmacy or pharmaceutical distributor. Then there are the home healthcare drugs. What happens to those drugs and how are they destroyed? Annual global sales of all pharmaceutical product including controlled substances, dangerous drugs and over-the-counter drugs equal $300 billion.Many state laws forbid re-distribution of any drugs once a patient has taken them home. These medications are generally flushed away when no longer in use. Returned pills are supposed to be destroyed, primarily for safety and liability reasons. Drug makers pay reverse distributors to collect and incinerate returned and expired drugs. For drug wholesaler, pharmacies and physicians, reverse distributors are utilized in returning pharmaceutical products. The returnee is sometimes credited for the returned items which helps defray cost. The Drug Enforcement Agency also publishes an authorized reverse distributor list to handle controlled substance for disposal. There are federal and state regulations that govern pharmaceutical waste disposal. For some states such as California, each county is allowed to have additional codes to regulate the waste disposal. Hazardous medical waste disposal can cost up to 15 times more then general waste disposal depending where the facility is located. Distributors, pharmacy administrators and doctors are all aware that millions of doses of perfectly good medications are thrown away every year. In the United States, we take great pride in recycling human hearts, corneas, livers and kidneys, but we haven't come up with a way to reuse suitable prescription drugs to help so many people. There is an alternative however. It is illegal to transfer medications between patients in the U.S. but these medicines can be exported to patients abroad. Last year, Aid for AIDS (AFA) shipped over 3 million dollars worth of HIV drugs from New York to Latin America, Africa and the rest of the developing world. The goal of the recycling medicine project is to gather unused medications that have been paid for and deliver them to people overseas who need them and cannot afford them. Some may oppose the idea of reusing prescription drugs because they fear abuse in the system. In fact, before anyone embarks in such a program, local and federal regulations must be reviewed. From a humanitarian position, there's got to be some way to get these medications back into the system for people who need them. Environmentally, it is one less thing our waste treatment plants have to deal with. Information Resources:
Hoover's Online
Returns Industry Association
Oklahoma State University
Wall Street Journal |
