By Katie Nelson
HIGHLINE TIMES

In June, King County became the second county in the nation to require unused drug drop-off collections to be funded by pharmaceutical companies. Alameda County near San Francisco led the movement last year.

These secured drop-off boxes are an alternative to disposing of prescriptions in a garbage can or flushing them down the toilet, two common ways people get rid of no longer needed medication. Instead, citizens are asked to bring their pills to a drop-off checkpoint, where they are then transported to an incinerator.

Drop-off boxes in Burien are currently located at the Bartell’s Drugstore on Fourth Avenue Southwest and the King County Sheriff’s precinct office on Sixth Avenue Southwest.

Approximately 30 percent of all prescriptions are never ingested, according to Take Back Your Meds, a conglomerate of police, drug stores and health organizations committed to creating a drug return program in Washington State.

Historically, pharmacies or other sites have been financially responsible for disposing of medication.

But a growing number of people, including Burien city councilmember Joan McGilton, feel that the corporations manufacturing the drugs should pay the price, roughly two cents per bottle.

“[The pills] sit in people’s medicine cabinets, and that’s where kids are finding them, either young kids taking them inadvertently or teenagers finding the Percocet and the Oxycodone, and selling them,” McGilton said. “Kids are killing themselves with this stuff and it’s just horrid.”

When people throw away pills, it makes it easier for others to get their hands on drugs they might not have access to as easily, according to McGilton. A CNN Money study conducted in 2011 estimates the price of street-sold Oxycodone to be between $12 and $40 per pill, compared to $6 when sold at a pharmacy.

In addition to the increased potential for abuse, McGilton, an environmental engineer, is concerned about the environmental impact of pill disposal, as well. She got involved in the effort to push pill-collecting onto corporate bank accounts five years ago, when information regarding pharmaceutical drop boxes was presented to both of the waste committees she belongs to.

“What the drug industry wants everybody to do is throw [prescriptions] in the garbage, which goes to the landfill, and then once it gets to the landfill, it gets into the leeching collection system, which is the water which comes off the landfill, which gets processed through sewer treatment, but it doesn’t take out the drugs,” she said.

McGilton claims that drugs flushed down the toilet are unable to be chemically separated from clean water during the recycling process, meaning that small amounts of medication are contaminating the water.

However, a report from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration states that it is safe to flush medications, and that most medication contamination in water is caused by human waste tainted with drug residue. Regardless, McGilton says returning medications is the safest way to dispose of them.

While the legislation for manufacturer-funded pill collection was passed this year, there is still a chance that it will not be upheld. Alameda County was slapped with a lawsuit by several manufacturing organizations, including the Generic Pharmaceutical Association, claiming drug disposal is the responsibility of local pharmacies and government entities.

Whether the same could happen in King County remains to be seen, McGilton said. Until then, she is glad that pharmaceutical companies are being held to a standard of accountability.

“I am absolutely convinced that the manufacturers are making huge amounts of money,” she said. “The least they could do is take back stuff that doesn’t need to be in people’s houses.”