Update for May 3
The tallies are in for the April 30 Drug Take Back Day in Seattle. According to a Seattle Police Department press release, 286.12 pounds of prescription drugs were dropped off throughout the city. A precinct-by-precinct breakdown was also provided:

North Precinct 54.55 pounds
East Precinct 37.35 pounds
West Precinct 19.45 pounds
South Precinct 94.29 pounds
Southwest Precinct 80.50 pounds

Original Story
Note: This story is broken into two parts. First, the press release from Take Back Your Meds, followed by information from Margaret Shield, policy liaison for King County’s Hazardous Waste Management Program on the need for a year-round take back program and the difficulties Take Back Your Meds has run into making one a reality.

Drop off locations on April 30 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m (unless otherwise noted)

Ballard: Shilshole Bay Marina at 7001 Seaview Avenue n.w.

West Seattle: Belvedere Viewpoint at 3600 Admiral Way s.w. or the Seattle Police Southwest Precinct at 2300 s.w. Webster St

Des Moines: Bartell Drugs at 27055 Pacific Highway s. (2 p.m. to 6 p.m.) or Bartell Drugs at 21615 Pacific Highway s. (9 a.m. to 1 p.m.)

Additional information on facilities accepting unused or old prescription and over-the-counter medicines can be found at www.takebackyourmeds.org/dea-events.

Press Release
National Drug Take Back Day highlights the critical need for ongoing and sustainable safe drug disposal programs to reduce the rising rates of prescription drug abuse, overdoses, and accidental poisonings. Sponsored by the Federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) with local law enforcement agencies, the one-day event provides communities with free, anonymous medicine returns for unused medications, including dangerous controlled substances. Take-back programs also help protect the environment, while they safeguard public health.

In Washington state, poisonings are the leading cause of accidental deaths, surpassing car crashes and falls, according to a 2010 study from the Washington State Department of Health. While single-day events like the DEA’s National Drug Take Back Day help reduce these risks, the Take Back Your Meds coalition contends that Washington state needs an ongoing solution to address the serious, long-term problem. The group is comprised of local law enforcement agencies, health organizations, drugstores, local governments, environmental groups and community organizations that support a statewide medicine take-back program financed by pharmaceutical manufacturers, instead of by local governments and tax dollars.

Each year, Washington state spends $31.7 million to hospitalize and treat children for unintentional poisonings from medicines ($16.2), cover emergency room costs for kids who accidentally ingested medications ($9.3) and on expenses for children who have overdosed ($6.2). Additionally, there are environmental risks that occur when people flush medicines down drains or toilets, or put them in the trash. Improper drug disposal creates environmental contaminants that threaten water quality, aquatic species, and the soil.

Currently, only 14 Washington counties have a handful of temporary drug take-back programs, which are funded by law enforcement agencies, pharmacies, or community groups. This puts an undue burden on these organizations and taxpayers—many of which have limited resources in this tough economic climate. Take Back Your Meds argues that drug manufacturers who produce medicines should provide an ongoing take-back system, as a part of their cost of doing business. This would protect Washington communities and the Puget Sound from the health and environmental hazards that unused medicines create.

For only 1 penny for every $16 in drug sales, pharmaceutical companies could easily fund a convenient, ongoing state take-back program. Similar programs already exist in Canada. This past March, the Washington State Legislature failed to pass a bill for a secure medicine take-back program, which would have been the first statewide program in the nation. The Take Back Your Meds coalition continues to support the passage of state legislation to protect families and the environment.

To learn more about Take Back Your Meds or to find temporary take-back programs near your area if you miss the April 30 event visit: www.takebackyourmeds.org.

More information from Margaret Shield, policy liaison for King County’s Hazardous Waste Management Program

First, an interesting fact. As mentioned above, the Take Back day is sponsored by the DEA and carried out by local law enforcement offices. What happens to the drugs once we drop them off? The DEA picks them up and ships them to a high temperature incineration facility, which Shield said is the only way to completely destroy the chemicals and avoid environmental impacts.

The urgency to find funding (ideally from drug companies) mentioned in the press release hinges on two realities, Shield said. First, local law enforcement agencies are running on serious budget shortfalls across the state and putting aside money for these take back programs will become more difficult. Second, Shield said the federal laws are changing and all indications are that the DEA will no longer facilitate take back programs and local law enforcement will no longer be required to get involved.

“I am afraid that we have these stop gap measures right now but they are probably going to go away pretty soon,” Shield said. “If the DEA takes away it’s support too, which I believe they will,… we will be left with a situation where people don’t have secure ways to dispose of it and are basically having to pollute the environment to get the drugs out of their homes.”

“We know that we need to find a long term solution for our state and create a permanent take back program,” she said.

Mentioned in the press release above, Take Back Your Meds has been trying to pass a bill in Olympia that would force large pharmaceutical companies to take the reigns on funding and operating a take back program year round. Shield said the bill made it to the Senate floor in March 2011, but failed.

“The approach was it wouldn’t be a big government program and it wouldn’t require any money from the state budget but the drug companies would set up and manage the program and run it in the private sector where they can operate it really efficiently,” she said.

That's when the pharmaceutical company lobbyists stepped in.

““The problem is that the drug companies are strongly opposing the bill,” Shield said. “They are a very powerful interest group in Olympia and right now they are just saying no, they don’t want to be responsible for this even though the cost to them is really very small – perhaps just pennies per prescription – they don’t want to pay for it and they were raising a lot of doubts and confusion about the bill.”

Shield said lobbyists raised questions about how “we would know for sure that taking back medicines, preventing them from getting flushed or thrown away, how we would know for sure that (the program would be) a benefit to the community?”

The interest group focused on a lack of specific scientific data illustrating the dangers (and seemingly ignored the risks of drug abuse or accidental poisoning), and Shield admitted coming up with those numbers is difficult because it is often impossible to determine if a pill was flushed down the toilet, thrown in the trash or simply passed through someone’s body and was never metabolized.

“It’s a challenging scientific issue and again it comes back to … we know it’s not smart to flush motor oil or throw motor oil in the garbage can. I think we have to get used to understanding that these drugs can be harmful chemicals in the wrong situations, too, and we need to dispose of them properly,” she said.

Clear scientific data aside, Shield said “all the public health experts, the environmental experts, the folks that deal with water quality, the folks that operate landfills, the DEA and various experts on poisoning and drug abuse are all supporting medicine take back programs as an important way to address the big problem of poisoning and abuse and environmental pollution that we have with drugs.”

“We believe that as much as 30 percent of medicines go unused – that’s about 33 million containers of drugs in our state every year - and we think it’s pretty obvious that it’s smarter not to flush those or throw those into a landfill to help reduce the amount of pharmaceutical pollution that’s out there.”

Shield said the bill will hit the senate floor again in January 2012 and hopes elected officials will “continue to increase their understanding of how our communities need these take back programs.”

This is the second (and possibly last) National Drug Take Back Day sponsored by the DEA and carried out by local law enforcement. The last was on Sept. 21, 2010 and 9,000 pounds of medicine were collected in Washington alone.