Drug Enforcement Administration Wants Your Drug With An Unused Prescription

If you have medicines or prescription drugs that are unwanted, unused sitting in your medicine cupboard then don’t worry the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) will be more than happy to help you out.

Drug Enforcement Administration Wants Your Drug With An Unused Prescription

The federal drug agency needs your expired, unwanted or unused medicines or prescription drugs for its 20th National Prescription Take-Back Day which is happening on Saturday. This is to help and ensure that all the homes are safe from drug/medicine abuse.

Syringe exchange programs and walk-in clinics which were closed at the starting of the coronavirus pandemic, experts expressed a concern that the virus of corona may intensify the United States’ opioid epidemic. The opioid epidemic particularly refers to the increase in deaths and hospitalizations. Fears from the opioid epidemic have mostly played out.

According to the preceding data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC & CDP), 87,000 or more people in the United States have been dead by the over usage of drugs over a 12 month period that ended in September 2020. The deaths recorded due to the drug overdose before were examined and 87,000 deaths per year were recorded, the highest of all according to the data published on Wednesday, April 16.

Officials predicted that there were 3000 additional deaths due to drug overdose which were not reported.

The overdose deaths from September 2019 to September 2020 were 28.8% more than the deaths from September 2018 to September 2019.

Dr. Jessica Taylor who is an assistant teacher of Medicine at Boston University School of Medicine and an addiction medicine expert at Boston Medical Center’s Grayken Center said that after the pandemic people have been separated from harm reduction services, addiction treatment services, and from the communities and networks that they use to stay safe and avoid overdose. The only way out of this situation is access to telemedicine services and pharmaceuticals to treat addiction disorders.

According to the Times, most of the drug overuse is due to tonic medications like methamphetamine or due to illegally manufactured fentanyl and different artificial opioids. More and more deaths are including mixtures of medicines, such as fentanyl or heroin combined with tonics.

In 1999, according to the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), 3,442 deaths were recorded due to the overdose of any drug or medicines. By 2017 the death toll reached the number 17,029 deaths per year and it dropped in the year 2019 when 14,139 deaths were reported due to drug overdose. 

For Take Back Day, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is encouraging and also convincing them to maybe stop taking any dangerous medications that are prescribed to them at collection sites to prevent themselves from getting addicted and also to stop the overdose deaths. Other drug prescriptions such as tablets, patches, capsules, or any other solid forms can still be acceptable. The agency also said that other liquid, illegal drugs, or any syringes will not be acceptable at all.

Acting DEA Administrator D. Christopher Evans said in a statement that we should regularly clean our homes and medication cupboards and any other areas where we keep drugs to keep our homes safe and clean and to remove the unused and unwanted pharmaceuticals that we store. To protect your loved ones and the environment safe and clean it is important to submit all the unused and unwanted medicines to the local collection for disposal, he added. The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) reported that Last October, people from the United States turned up on a Take Back Day and gave almost 500 tons of unwanted drugs.