Every day thousands of teenagers use someone else's prescription drugs to get high for the first time. In addition, prescription drugs account for about half of accidental poisoning deaths in the U.S. Cleaning leftover prescriptions out of medicine cabinets can help reduce that number.
On April 30, 2011, the Pennsylvania Medical Society (PAMED) and Drug Free Pennsylvania helped to clean out medicine cabinets of unneeded medications at a medication clean-up event held in Allentown. Two hundred and seventy two people dropped off 502 pounds of leftover medications and 14,868 doses of narcotics.
This is the third medication clean-up event, with a total of 542 people dropping off 1,102 pounds of medications and 31,320 doses of narcotics.
In addition to curbing teenagers’ abuse of prescription drugs, the medication clean-up campaign will help prevent medication duplication by seniors confused over which drugs to take.
In the future, PAMED will prepare a guide that other organizations can use to conduct similar campaigns in their neighborhoods.