I did the same, not with painkillers, but with unused antibiotics - I turned out to be allergic to them after the first dose, but a friend’s daughter was about to go to Honduras on a medical mission, so I donated them to her. They apparently needed to be in the original Rx bottle.
(bolding mine)
Actually, that isn’t the best way.
Flushing them down the toilet or disposing of them in the trash, either way they eventually end up leaching into the ground and making their way into the water system. 
What can possibly go wrong is, if your friend is stopped by a LEO and found to be in possession of prescription drugs that were not specifically prescribed to him, (especially, pain meds) he can be charged with the felony crime of possession of a controlled substance. (as some pain meds are classified as such) :eek:
Correct. IMHO, the best solution would be to take them to your doctor or pharmacist, so that they can dispose of them properly.
In France (and I think, though I’ve never had to do it, the UK), you take your old pills back to the pharmacy - you’re not supposed to just throw them out. Maybe your local pharmacy would take them back from you?
Two threads on the same topic within a day of eachother. huh.
Proper protocol for disposal of medications is to put water into the bottle, also some sort of solid such as cat litter or coffee grounds, close the bottle and throw it in the trash. This dissolves the pills and renders them unusable with the solid matter in the bottle. Do not flush them. If you take them to the pharmacy they will just throw them in the trash, do some variation of the above, or tell you that they don’t take pills back to dispose. If you take them to a doctor’s office they will just throw them in the trash as well, or tell you to take it to a pharmacy.
(from citation linked in #8):
You original point of departure was that post-expiration date efficacy
“has not been proven for any drug”, and that has been falsified.
We now have in place an irrational system now where perfectly good medicine
is being thrown away no no good reason, and that needs to be changed.
I would like to have more of a citation than IIRC, both for the existence
of “non-negligible amounts”, and for the unstated thesis that those
amounts are harmful.
http://www.fda.gov/ForConsumers/Cons.../ucm101653.htm
[/quote]
According to the citation, the FDA has not established that flushing drugs actually
hurts anything:
(from link)
Furthermore, the FDA recommends that 32 drugs be disposed of by flushing:
I guess it depends on the pharmacy as to whether they take them and how they dispose of them. I know that a large drugstore chain here will take them and dispose of them for you. From their web site:
I believe I spoke with sufficient precision and clarity, but let me repharase
for your benefit: What could possibly be wrong from a moral or medical standpoint
with giving pain medicine to anyone who is in pain?
Obviously it would be illegal to do so without a prescription, given the anal state
of modern drug laws. However, the chances of apprehension are close to zero for
anyone who is careful, a level of risk not worth considering.
Thank you for your replies. I honestly never thought about taking them to a pharmacy. :smack:
I’m trying to get into the habit of doing things legally, which is why I won’t give them to my friend. If there was a way to legally transfer them to him, I would.
Yeah, and we don’t want to have a DopeFest, as strong as some of them are, it would just be a DopeSleepontheCouchFest.
I have a ton of medical supplies, heparin and saline syringes and some prescription drugs and devices that I am dropping off by the boxful Wednesday evening to a woman who sorts drug and medical supply donations for the following organization:
This organization is local to me and the woman I spoke to is willing to take everything I have. I presume she will take what she can and will properly dispose of what she can’t.
I ended up with so much to donate due to an overzealous home medical supply company. My sense is that the more they sent to my mother’s house, despite my protestations that we didn’t. need. any. more. medical. supplies., the more the organization was reimbursed by the government.
But in any event, donation worked for me!
In that study, the FDA tested some samples taken from specific lots - the results of that testing tells you that the lots and products in that study were safe 90% of the time, but says nothing at all about all the other drugs on the market. If the study tested Advil 100mg, the results say nothing whatsoever about Motrin 100mg or generic Ibuprofen 100mg made from manufacturers A, B, C…
You cannot extrapolate results on one batch/formulation and assume that it applies to all batches or formulations of every possible drug. Science just doesn’t work that way.
This is why we have the protocols in place that we have. You can argue that they might need to be revisited - and I’m not really against that consideration - but you cannot make blanket statements about the safety of all medicines in the manner you are doing.
You do not know that most of the medicines that people want to randomly throw out are “perfectly good.” Lobby for longer stability validation studies, lobby for a different legal structure or method of transfer to needy patients…go ahead.
But do NOT make blanket statements that expired drugs are “perfectly good”. You do not have that information. The manufacturers do not have that information. The FDA does not have that information.
You are spreading some dangerous misinformation.
Depending on where you are, Rite Aid Pharmacy has a drug disposal program. I would imagine other pharmacies do as well.
I do this too. I’ve had a couple of emergency situations in my life where I have had to ask someone for a couple of pills and other times when I have offered to share. A persons you can’t share drugs because that’s illegal position tends to become real flexible when they can’t get their tooth pulled or an emergency root canal for another 36 hours.
That’s why the friend does the following:
- opens his medicine bottle (the one with his name on it)
- puts the OP’s leftovers in there
- disposes of the OP’s medicine bottle.
:eek:
Parole or probation?
In Aus as well.
On the issue of sending drugs overseas esp. to Africa it is valid. There are many drugs that are fine beyond the use by dates and really unless someone wants to send them fresh “free” medication what choice do they have??
Hospital and health waste is criminal, did you know there is a use by date on tongue depressors? Really, why? Will the wood splinter and choke some poor bugger?
Extrapolation from the FDA study in question may not be fully valid under
strict scientific standards, but it and other testimony are good enough for
the following august authority:
Harvard Medical School: Drug Expiration Dates - Do They Mean Anything?
(from link):
Did you notice that prior to 1979 expiration dates were not required?
1979 was not exactly the Dark Ages, and if there had been a real need
for expiration dates I would think it would have been noticed and implemented
decades sooner.
Neither the FDA or Harvard claim all drugs are good indefinitely past
their expiration dates, and I did not either. However, in light of my citations
I think it reasonable to stand on what I said before, namely, that perfectly
good medicine is being thrown away for no good reason. and that it would
do the patients of the world much good if the present irrational system
were overhauled.
Kindly address your concerns to the Harvard Medical School. There is a
“Contact Us” menu option in the upper right of the link I provided.
The system needs to be overhauled - fine, I don’t disagree with that. The issue remains… how long is ok for you? 3 years? 5? 10? 100? Someone needs to collect that data, because there will be a time when a drug will no longer be good. For some drugs, that time will be sooner rather than later. At the moment, no one is collecting that data, because there is no need to. Be prepared to pay more for drugs, though, because long-term stability studies and facilities are very expensive.
“Strict scientific standards”, however, are the only thing we have - if we do not adhere to them, we cannot trust any product that comes out of a drug manufacturer.
Do the research. Collect the data. Set expiration dates accordingly, as many years into the future as you want
Do NOT go around claiming that “most drugs are good past the studied date, so go ahead and take them” until you have the information to support that statement.
MOST does not mean ALL. 90% safe means that 10% are not. What are the ones that aren’t? How common are they? What conditions led them to fail? Are those representative conditions for household storage?
All you’re doing is giving me news articles summarizing the same information from the same study. You still have no data past the legally mandated study periods to warrant making claims that random unused drugs in someone’s medicine cabinet are still safe years after their expiration date.
If you don’t understand the scientific process, do not make scientific statements.
How much other medication is the friend using? Is he short on pills because he’s been taking too many? If so, then your giving him the pills could indeed be harmful.
Pragmatically speaking, if you knew the friend, and were CERTAIN of his dosage and that he wasn’t on the edge of any kind of abuse etc., then the odds of either of you getting into trouble are reasonably slim. But it’s not a risk I’d personally care to take with narcotics.
Expensive? To store samples and then test them after a few years?
I worked in QA for a pharmaceutical company myself (bulky adhesive devices)
and I can tell you storage would be no big deal. The chemistry might be more so,
but we had undegreed technicians perform most of our wet chemistry, so I need
more than your declaration that that end would be “very expensive”.
Also, we should by now, 300 years after Boyle’s day, have a pretty good idea
exactly how well a lot of compounds are going to retain their potency without
having to go through any testing whatever, and that includes compounds used
in our medicines.
Finally, that $1billion that the US military was throwing out must represent a tiny
fraction of the needlessly unused medicine worldwide, so there should be little
doubt regarding the net cost-effectiveness potential of obtaining much later
expiration dates.
Fine, we are off to a pretty good start with the FDA having signed off on those
90 drugs the USA-USN-USAF had piled up, which, by the way, probably represent
a pretty fair percentage of all prescribed medicine.
Suits me.
I think we can assume household storage conditions, can’t we?
Also, I notice that refrigeration is recommended as a preservation method.
That makes me wonder about the almost universal room-temperature requirement
recommended for medicine, but I guess that is a topic for another thread.
Anyway, I have the backing of the FDA and the Harvard Medical School.
Who do you have, Bubba?
You think the FDA and Harvard University are both going to go out on a limb
over something as basic as this? I don’t.
How about you not giving us any more speeches about science and scientific
method until you have provided a few scientific citations of your own?
I should at this point interject that I have never been on the giving or receiving end
of any unprecribed medicine.
Judgement call, Moms.
Respectfully disagree.