National Clean Out Your Medicine Cabinet Day
National Clean Out Your Medicine Cabinet Day occurs annually on the third Friday in April. The day aims to raise awareness and effectively rid homes of unused or expired prescription and over-the-counter medications sitting in medicine cabinets, nightstands, or kitchen cabinets that have the potential for diversion or abuse by family members, friends, or visitors to your home.
Many medicine cabinets are ticking time-bombs. You never know which drug, when it will happen, or who might be affected. You can do your part to dispose of those leftovers and unused medications that can lead to misuse, addiction, poisoning, or death.
Today, the country is in a pitched battle in the war against opioid addiction. Seventy percent of opioid dependence, overdoses, and deaths begin with unused drugs in the medicine cabinet. It’s a startling statistic speaking directly to the danger of leftover, unused pain prescriptions. But, opioids are just one of the dangerous drugs found lying around our homes. Others, such as antidepressants, muscle-relaxers, ADHD medications, and sleep aids remaining in medicine cabinets may result in misuse, diversion, poisoning, abuse, and death. Additionally, some expired medications may become toxic. For instance, studies indicate the commonly prescribed drug tetracycline may degrade to the point of becoming toxic to the kidneys.
How to Do it Right
How you dispose of your expired or unused medications is just as important as why. Environmental studies show that flushed medications flow into our water supply. They negatively impact the fish we eat and the water we drink. When discarded in the trash, medications leach into and contaminate the soil.
Site-of-use or at-home drug disposal solutions offer a safe, effective, and eco-friendly way of ridding your home of medications we no longer need or have expired. As a supplement to site-of-use drug disposal on April 19, you may also consider participating in the Drug Enforcement Agency’s (DEA’s) National Drug Takeback Day each year in late April. (Cancelled for 2020 due to COVID 19 crisis)
National Clean Out Your Medicine Cabinet Day History
DisposeRx founded National Clean Out Your Medicine Cabinet Day in 2019 to raise awareness of the risks associated with keeping leftover or expired prescription or over the counter medications in your home. Drug addiction, overdose, poisonings, and deaths related to leftover medications are real. So is the contamination of our environment from flushing medications or putting them in the trash. DisposeRx provides a safe and effective way to dispose of expired and unused medications that are easy to use and eco-friendly.
About DisposeRx, Inc.
DisposeRx, Inc., a North Carolina-based company, is dedicated to decreasing the risks of drug diversion, overdoses, suicides, accidental poisonings and antibiotic resistance by facilitating medication management behavior change and eradicating the misuse of leftover medications. DisposeRx’s market-leading, patented drug disposal packets and education programs are currently available at almost 50% of retail pharmacies and through 90% of the wholesale pharmacy and medical distributors across the nation.
