Picture of Health: Take-back prescription drug day planned by DEA - Health care, wellness, food nutrition, exercise, medical research news from reporters who know the halls of the world's top hospital

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September 1, 2010

Take-back prescription drug day planned by DEA

It's time to clean out your medicine cabinet.

The federal Drug Enforcement Administration is holding a drug take-back day Sept. 25.

The agency says that old medicines that languish in cabinets often end up abused or misued even if the owner of the drugs isn't aware of it.

The rate of prescription drug abuse is growing by the day and the DEA says that most abused drugs are taken from family or friends - including from someone's home medicine cabinet.

The drive will also give people a safe way to get rid of old drugs. Many people throw them away or flush them down the toilet, which can be a hazard to the environment.

This is the first-ever drug take-back day hosted by the federal government. It runs from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and is free and anonymous. Click here to find a collection site near you. It will be updated regularly.

Posted by Andrea Walker at 10:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Comments

I think that this is a great idea. Since I do not want to dump chemicals into the environment I have a lot of expired medication. However, the DEA and other web sites that I have seen do not contain a lot of information. Perhaps you can get answers to the following: 1. should the drugs be in original containers? 2. Should the drugs be labeled? 3. Can we just dump everything into a any old container and take it to the collection site?
/ John, I will find out for you.

Posted by: John20723 | September 1, 2010 9:05 PM

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About Picture of Health

Meredith Cohn has been a reporter since 1991, covering everything from politics and airlines to the environment and medicine. A runner since junior high and a particular eater for almost as long, she tries to keep up on health and fitness trends. Her aim is to bring you the latest news and information from the local and national medical and wellness communities.

Andrea K. Walker knows it’s weird to some people, but she has a fascination with fitness, diseases, medicine and other health-related topics. She subscribes to a variety of health and fitness magazines and becomes easily engrossed in the latest research in health and science. An exercise fanatic, she’s probably tried just about every fitness activity there is. Her favorites are running, yoga and kickboxing. So it is probably fitting that she has been assigned to cover the business of healthcare and to become a regular contributor to this blog. Andrea has been at The Sun for nearly 10 years, covering manufacturing, retail , airlines and small and minority business. She looks forward to telling readers about the latest health news.

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