The US is to hold its fifth national drug take-back day on Saturday April 27, from 10 am to 2 pm.

Organised by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), this is hailed as a great opportunity for those who missed the previous  events, or who have subsequently accumulated unwanted, unused prescription  drugs, to safely dispose of those medications.

In the four previous Take-Back events, DEA in  conjunction with our state, local, and tribal law enforcement partners have  collected more than 2 million pounds (1,018 tons) of prescription medications  were removed from circulation. This, in addition to the many local take-back events, may be substituted by alternative schemes organised on behalf of manufacturers who will in future bear the responsibility for disposal of their unwanted products. Quite how this will work is presently unclear, though a generic scheme similar to our battery collections and WEEE collection arrangements are likely.

http://www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov/drug_disposal/takeback/

Despite these more recent developments, it seems likely that mop-up collections, either locally or nationally, will continue to bear fruit, removing unwanted and out-dated medicines from bathroom cabinets across America. Preventing escape to the environment though inappropriate disposal, adverse health effects from the ingestion of out-dated and defective products, and accidental poisonings, this can only be a good idea. There is no distinction between POMs and OTC products.

Here in the UK, it is unfortunate that there is no such scheme. Most pharmacies will accept  small amounts of unwanted products but this is rarely funded and they must bear the cost themselves. Accepting unwanted OTC products is less common, though the potential adverse health and environmental effects are actually little diminished. Instead, we must cope with an official ‘ostrich effect’ that seeks to pretend there is no such problem, and definitely no advantage from efforts to attract disposal, while chasing trivial drug disposal in clinical wastes and used sharps while ignoring the vast quantities that slip by elsewhere.

Whether arranged locally or nationally, drug take-back schemes facilitate safe disposal. Whether arranged by local government, by the PCTs or centrally by the Environment Agency on behalf of DEFRA and by the Department of Health, this can only be a good idea. It’s benefit will far outweigh the modest cost and effort involved. Instead, we suffer policy decisions that blame patients who ask their GPs for unnecessary prescriptions, rather than questioning the poor prescribing standards of those GPs, for it is they, not the patient, who sign the script! As for OTC products, they simply don’t appear on the radar.

There is much to gain from drug take-back and disposal schemes in the UK, either local or national. Perhaps the enlightened administrations in Scotland or Wales might show the way, and shame England to follow suit.