I know its bad to flush them down the toilet (unless the police are beating on the door). I also know to not give them to a friend with a bad back, even though he has a script for the same pills. It seems very wasteful to toss them in the trash and I don’t want to have them filling up my medicine cabinet until next year, when the “dump your drugs” thing happens. Mostly because I’ll forget and then keep them for years.
Is there any way to donate unused pain meds to anyone?
If not, what do you folks think would be the best way for me to clean out my medicine cabinet?
The best way is to throw them in the garbage, if you’re worried about someone rifling through you’re trash you could crush them and mix them with something (flour, kitty litter, coffee grounds etc). You could also hold on to them until your city holds a pill “take back” drive. Also, honestly, they’ll be good for years, so I wouldn’t get rid of them based on them losing their potency, just keep them in a dark dry location and they’ll be find for a while.
If you really want to donate them, the best thing I can think of would be to try calling a women’s shelter and see if they want them.
I was surprised recently when I was at my daughter’s pediatrician’s office. I asked what to do with my old meds (my pregnancy was considered high risk, and I was prescribed a ton of meds “just in case” and I thankfully ended up needing none of them). I had asked because I was hoping the doctor would say to bring them into the office and they would dispose of them. But what she said was that she volunteers with a clinic in Africa, and they take unused meds (even expired ones, if they are recently expired) to use there. So hey, problem solved, I dropped them off later that week. So my advice is to figure out who you know most likely to be involved with a similar organization.
This is not true of all drugs - and, in fact, has not been proven for any drug beyond the legally required testing that formed part of development and stability protocols established by regulatory agencies. Some drugs might be very stable, some might not be, and there is no way to know without testing the drug.
I can assure you that some medications do degrade in time - both loss of potency and development of degradation products that have pharmacological behaviour in humans (aka adverse side effects). My expertise - four years of R&D and quality control stability testing of hundreds of pharmaceutical products.
It is incredibly irresponsible to suggest otherwise.
It is, in Canada and the USA and presumably lots of other jurisdictions, illegal to do this. You cannot pass prescription drugs on to other people, and any shelter should be flat out refusing any offers. Do not do this.
The reason is simple: the only way to know that the drug is what you claim it is is to test it - which is a destructive test rendering the drug unusable.
Even if the package hasn’t been opened, even stuff that pharmacists don’t sell and get returned to manufacturers - once it’s left Quality Control at the manufacturer, it cannot be resold/passed on because the safety of the product is no longer assured.
Pharmaceutical companies dispose of chemical products/left over drugs via incineration - there are companies that specialize in this. Just throw them out - denature them if you want, but just throw them out.
ETA: frankly, the idea that doctors are passing expired drugs of questionable origin on to Africa strikes me as ridiculously unethical. I understand that drugs are very expensive, and there are serious problems that can be helped by these medications, but I’m uncomfortable with thinking that some organizations think it’s ok to pass on potentially unsafe products to the poor.
I think many drug stores accept them. I would also try the donation route. For a while, our church was taking the empty bottles.
Our ignorant society. On a dog forum no less I once found a dolt saying mix them into cooking fat and put them in the garbage. What a great way to make sure that dog never raids your garbage again.
Other then a handful of drugs (notably some antibiotics, insulin and nitroglycerin), both the FDA and the Military seems to feel they they are good well beyond their expiration date. And since the OP asked about pain meds, I’ll stand by my first post that if they are kept cool and dry, they’ll be fine for a while.
It’s pretty well documented that pharmaceuticals are making their way into lakes and streams. IIRC I believe fish are showing up with non-negligible amounts of hormonal birth control and antibiotics in them.
Do you know how many drugs there are? Have you tested them? I can assure you there are many more than 100 drugs, and the FDA has not tested them. As for the military - forgive me for not trusting them as a fully valid source on this topic.
And you’re ignoring a key part of the information - ten percent of the tested drugs were not safe and effective past their original expiration date. Only ONE was good for 15 years past it.
Drugs degrade. This is an absolute fact - it is indisputable. The rate at which they degrade is in question, and it’s true that there are financial and marketing reasons affecting the current laws. The laws only demand that companies show that drugs do not significantly degrade in a given time frame. There is no test - nothing whatsoever - done to see what happens next. They might degrade within one year, they might degrade within one century. They might just become less potent, they may develop into something that causes side effects and complications.
It’s not a time bomb - clearly they don’t “go bad” the day after the stamp on the box. But they do - and will - go bad…eventually. And no one know when that will be. There is no data, so you cannot claim they are safe and to do so is unscientific and irresponsible.
Obviously manufacturers want turnover. That’s a given.
But the expiration dates and the rules and testing procedures in place with regards to them come from the regulatory agencies. These might even vary country-to-country. This pharmacist is an idiot if he doesn’t know that. It is the FDA that establishes and enforces the rules…if they want longer expiration dates they can change the laws and wait for the data to come in. Perhaps many drugs will be shown to have longer shelf lives. Some won’t.
But let’s say the expiration dates become 5 years rather than 2 or 3. We will still have people asking “are they still safe?” after 5 years… and the answer will be the same. THERE IS NO DATA PAST THIS POINT.
Why on earth would a company continue to test something indefinitely just to see how long it’s good for if it’s not required to do so? Do you have any idea how expensive this sort of testing is?
Actually, yes, it does. I believe many protocols test for three years. Also portions of every lot of drugs already on the market - well past the R&D stage, I’m talking Advil here - go into long-term stability testing with samples stored at 25C/Ambient R.H. (or similar, perhaps 60% RH) throughout the shelf life of the lot. They are tested on a regular basis and if a problem is found, an investigation might trigger a recall.
[quote]
Rather, the drug is tested by subjecting it to extreme heat and humidity for several months, then chemically analyzing each ingredient’s identity and strength. (After the date is set and the drug is marketed, testing continues for the full two years.)
[quote]
This describes accelerated stability trials, which are done to determine the ideal formulation - aka recipe - for the drug product. Various stability trials, under different non-chemical storage conditions continue throughout the R&D process.
This writer either doesn’t know what he’s talking about, or is being deliberately misleading in the characterization of pharmaceutical stability protocols.
Probably does doesn’t mean does.
Again, there is no data. Test for as many years as you want…test for 10 years. At 10 years and one day you don’t know at all what happens after that.
That gallon of milk in your fridge…will you drink it on the day of the Best Before date? How about the next day? The day after that? A week? A month? A year? You can rather easily tell when the milk has gone bad, and you don’t even think about shipping it off to Africa to feed the poor starving children. The timeline is longer, but the same thing applies to drugs.
Given the thicket of US regulations surrounding the dispensing and access to prescription drugs and especially narcotics, I find it somewhat questionable that’s it’s OK to collect these from induividuals for recycling and shipping or taking overseas.
My local pharmacy accepts unused/unwanted medications. The OP’s probably will too. What they do with them, I do not know; but they will dispose of them legally and safely. Perhaps this is something the OP should explore.
Disposing of drugs is a problem. Yes, flushing does result in problems. So does the trash. Even hanging on to them leaves them available to children and pets.
Call around and try to find a better solution.
I think we have firmly established that drugs may be OK past their expiration date, but don’t risk your health on it.
Yeah, I was really surprised by it because I would have thought it was so strictly regulated, but in the moment I was mostly relieved that I had a solution to my situation. Maybe I didn’t completely understand what the group is taking the meds for.
i think the point is that there is no provision in any code I have seen to allow individuals to take opened narcotics (especially expired ones) from individuals for use in the US or overseas even if they are licensed medical professionals.
Heck, a company might provide 10 boxes of a drug to the lab for quality control testing (numbers chosen at random, but pretty reflective of reality). Six of those boxes might be used for the various tests while the extra are if there’s a problem with some of the results and an investigation needs to be conducted.
The remaining four, even if entirely unopened, have to be destroyed - they cannot be collected and sold by the company even though they never left the building. The risk of tampering/accidental contamination or of something having affected the integrity of the product is too great, and the liability issues pretty much drive that decision.
Everyone freaks out about ‘unknown side effects’ and companies selling drugs that have long-term effects that they didn’t predict, and the whole conspiracy about how drugs are made simply to force people to have to take more drugs (would that chemistry/biochemistry be that easy!)… and yet try such convoluted justifications to use or pass on old, expired medications that may not have been stored adequately or that may have been contaminated (not to mention the inability to prove that the drug is what the label claims it is, once it’s left it’s original packaging/pharmacy bottle).
I don’t get it.
I do have some expired sour cream in the fridge, though… give me your address, I’ll send it to you. :smack:
Our doctor also takes old prescriptions and donates them to an organization for third world countries.
However, he told us that although he sends everything to them, once it gets there they determine if the drugs are still effective. He seemed to think they too had different research as to how long certain drugs might really be effective versus what might be on the label.
At any rate, we take ours to that doctor whenever we go for an appointment.
Gee, I dunno … maybe call up your friend and go “hey, I have some leftovers of a medication you’re already on, do you want them?”
You’re making this way harder than it needs to be.
