King County among handful of places in country with medicine return program

A recent article in the New York Times focuses on how it’s been a year since the DEA released its rule allowing pharmacies to take back leftover medicines, yet few pharmacies have implemented take-back programs.  Pharmacy medicine return sites provide a convenient way for people to dispose of unused and unwanted medications, decreasing the amount of medications that end up abused or in our waterways.

The article references the product stewardship law in King County that requires pharmaceutical manufacturers to finance and organize the take-back system, which provides the financing to allow pharmacies to host drop boxes. Prevention WINS members were strong supporters of the King County law and stand ready to publicize the program when it is up and running. 

One of the two plans submitted to King County, ReturnMeds LLC, will be fully implemented by mid-April 2016. The plan includes a list of places that will host drop boxes where people can return their unused and unwanted medications. In NE Seattle, the following locations likely will have drop boxes: 

  

Teens' positive views of marijuana and alcohol associated with future DUI

Check out Dr. Wendy Sue Swanson's blog post about why it's important to talk with children in early middle school about marijuana and alcohol.

Here's an excerpt:

New acronym for me this week: RWDD. It’s “Riding With a Drinking Driver.” Not a drunk one, but someone who has been drinking . . . A study out yesterday in Pediatrics is worth a quick mention to any parent or any adult or any family doc or any pediatrician or any nurse practitioner or any medical assistant or any coach or any teacher that has contact/supervision/leadership/influence with a teen. The study, conducted on middle school students in the Los Angeles area, found that positive beliefs about marijuana at age 12 were predictors of later getting a DUI or RWDD when a new teen driver 4 years later. Translation: middle school is a wild time of transition and the time we should check in about marijuana’s lack of safety and risks associated with alcohol. Researchers conclude that 6th grade is when we should be talking with our tweens, that “positive beliefs and ability to resist marijuana in early adolescence, not actual alcohol and marijuana use, had the strongest association with DUI  and RWDD ∼4 years later.”

Dr. Swanson talked about how positive views on marijuana and alcohol are associated with future DUI on King5:

 

Parent education forum November 18: Preventing Teen Drug Use

Dr. Leslie R. Walker

What can parents do as alcohol, marijuana, and prescription drugs become more available? Find out during a free parent education forum:

Preventing Teen Drug Use
Wednesday, November 18, 2015
6:30 to 8:00 p.m.
Seattle Children's Hospital
Wright Auditorium
Enter hospital through the River Entrance

Dr. Leslie R. Walker, Chief of Adolescent Medicine at Seattle Children's, will discuss teen health, the impact of drug use, and what parents can do to prevent it.

Her talk will be followed by a panel discussion facilitated by Lisa Chinn, Seattle Children's Licensed Mental Health & Chemical Dependency Professional. In addition to Dr. Walker, panelists are:

• Dr. Suzan Mazor, Pediatric Emergency Medicine Physician at Seattle Children's
• Kipp Strong, Seattle Police Department Officer
• Rachel & Joseph, parents of a college sophomore.

President's weekly message focuses on prescription drug abuse

As part of the publicity for last Saturday's National Prescription Drug Take-back Day, President Obama focused his weekly address to the nation on prescription drug abuse and the need to secure and safely dispose of drugs in the household medicine cabinet.

Here is part of what he said:

More Americans now die every year from drug overdoses than they do in car crashes. And most of those deaths aren’t due to drugs like cocaine or heroin – but rather prescription drugs. In 2013 alone, overdoses from prescription pain medications killed more than 16,000 Americans. And most young people who begin misusing prescription drugs don’t buy them in some dark alley – they get them from the medicine cabinet.

If that’s not a good enough reason to participate in “National Prescription Drug Take-Back Day,” here’s another. Many prescription pain medications belong to the same class of drugs as heroin. In fact, four in five heroin users started out by misusing prescription drugs. And over the course of just one year, between 2013 and 2014, we saw a 33% increase in the number of heroin users.

All of this takes a terrible toll on too many families, in too many communities, all across the country – big and small, urban and rural. It strains law enforcement and treatment programs. It costs all of us – in so many different ways.