What is an Effective In-Home Medication Disposal Program?

Due to the ongoing opioid epidemic, alarming increase of fentanyl overdoses, the rise of the naloxone-immune xylazine, and now a potential crisis involving prescription stimulant misuse, America is experiencing a pivotal health emergency caused by too many unneeded drugs in the home. To address this emergency, many state and local governments are using State Opioid Response Grants (SOR) grants and opioid settlement dollars to invest in preventative measures such as drug drop-box kiosks or reactive measures like naloxone (NARCAN^TM) and, while valuable, they are not the most effective method to decrease the number of prescription drugs in the home.

As the leader of in-home drug disposal technologies, DisposeRx knows most drug misuse starts with prescription drugs from the home medicine cabinet. In the 1960’s, the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) found 80% of people suffering from heroin use disorder began by taking heroin. Today, the NIDA reports 75% of those undergoing treatment for heroin use disorder began by taking other people’s prescription drugs. Even today, NIDA reports over 50% of American homes have unused prescriptions in their medicine cabinets¹. DisposeRx learned that raising risk awareness and reducing the number of unneeded medications in the home are the most effective steps we can all take toward the common goal of improving public health.

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DisposeRx has found that three primary criteria must be satisfied before a method will be effective in reducing unneeded medications in the home:

1. Patients and caregivers must be aware of the risks posed by storing unneeded and expired medications in the home before they will be motivated to act.
2. Disposal methods must be easy to use, accessible to those that want them, and quickly render the medication unavailable for all practical purposes without creating additional risks.
3. The method has to be cost effective for all stakeholders.

By meeting those criteria, patients and caregivers are more likely to dispose of their leftover medications when they are no longer needed.

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Patients and caregivers must have a simple, convenient, and effective means for disposal. The DEA’s Take Back Days and drug kiosks (drug drop boxes) are a noble effort; however, the drug kiosks are inaccessible to those that need them most. Statistics show nearly 7 in 10 adults aged 40–79 used at least 1 prescription drug in the past 30 days (69.0%) ³. For older Americans, the combination of polypharmacy, limited mobility, and remote drug kiosk locations, can compound risk of an adverse drug event exponentially.

Regardless of a patients’ age or mobility, drug drop box kiosks continue to be deployed at law-enforcement facilities and pharmacies and many communities hold Drug Take Back Days as options for drug disposal. Unfortunately, research studies show these drop box kiosks and take-back events have almost no effect in reducing the number of opioids within a community. In 2017, a research study found that drug kiosks and Drug Take Back events in five Kentucky counties only received about 0.3% of opioids prescribed in a five county area; that’s less than half of one percent.⁴ Communities need a safe, convenient, and effective in-home disposal options.

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DisposeRx knows that to reverse the alarming trends in prescription drug misuse, we must educate the public about the risks of keeping unneeded medications and give them a convenient in-home disposal method. Without education about the risks, friends may give friends the one pill that kills. Without convenient disposal, parents’ medicine cabinets will continue to supply youth with prescription drugs. Preventable overdoses must stop and we can start with education and in-home disposal.

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