In late April, towns across the country participated in National Prescription Drug Take-Back Day -- a nationwide event organized by the federal Drug Enforcement Agency. Local law enforcement personnel and community groups were on hand to collect and dispose of unneeded and expired prescription drugs.
Most of us don't think about the old pill bottles cluttering up our medicine cabinets. But there are actually some important safety, privacy and environmental issues surrounding the disposal of unused prescription drugs. In this respect, take-back events are worthy endeavors. But some lawmakers want to go farther and make take-back programs mandatory.
Alameda County, California, recently passed an ordinance that would do just that. The county's new law requires pharmaceutical companies to develop, manage and pay for a new local drug take-back program.
There's good reason to believe very few people will participate in this program. It is also likely to result in higher drug prices and will produce few environmental benefits.
The driving force behind the take-back programs is concern for the environment. But less than 10 percent of pharmaceutical contamination is the result of improper disposal of unused medications. The vast majority of pharmaceutical contamination results from drugs being excreted by humans into waste water -- a problem take-back programs obviously can't address.
Encouraging proper household disposal is a superior approach to tackling this problem. Trash collected from homes is usually incinerated or put into double-lined municipal landfills equipped with collection systems that keep medicines from leaching into the ground.
Consumers do need to be educated about the risks of drug disposal. For instance, some people still improperly dispose of drugs in the sink or flush them down the toilet. In general, unneeded prescription drugs should be crushed, put in bags with sawdust, kitty litter or other fillers that make them unappealing to pets and children, and then thrown out in the trash. For privacy, bottle labels should be removed and destroyed before disposal.
Home disposal also avoids the dangerous "concentration" of pharmaceuticals. When many drugs are collected all at once, there's a greater risk they will be stolen or otherwise improperly used.
Alameda's law explicitly prohibits drug makers from charging any extra fees to pay for the program. But the simple fact is that consumers across the country will pay higher prices to cover the cost of the Alameda program.
And very few people are expected to actually participate. Vancouver, B.C.'s take-back program is often cited as a model, but a decade after its launch in 1997, a survey found that only 21 percent of respondents had made use of the program -- hardly justifying the cost and new bureaucracy.
Well-publicized, one-time take-back programs like the one in late April are a good way to raise awareness and encourage people to go through their medicine cabinets and dispose of unwanted pills. But the best "next step" is to educate consumers about proper and safe household disposal. There's no justification for the kind of permanent and mandatory take-back program that Alameda County is proposing.
Peter J. Pitts, a former FDA Associate Commissioner, is President of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest.