(Long Island, NY) Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman today marked the 10th annual National Prescription Drug Take-Back Day by urging New Yorkers to dispose of unused drugs at Take-Back Day sites and drop boxes that are available year-round. Prescription Drug Take-Back Days are organized twice a year by the federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in conjunction with state and local officials to provide a safe, convenient, and legal way to dispose of unused prescription drugs so that they are not susceptible to abuse. Individuals can turn in drugs anonymously, whether the drugs were prescribed to them or not. In the last four years, the total amount of drugs collected was 4,823,251 pounds, or 2,411 tons. Attorney General Schneiderman promoted the initiative at an event co-hosted by the Attorney General, Suffolk County Police Department, County Executive Steve Bellone and other local elected officials and community leaders.
Attorney General Schneiderman led the effort to enact the Internet System for Tracking Over-Prescribing Act, or I-STOP, a comprehensive law to fight prescription drug abuse that created year-round medication drop boxes. I-STOP expanded on the model of the take-back day to make medication drop boxes available year round for the safe and legal disposal of unused prescription drugs.
“One of the keys to stemming the growing epidemic of prescription drug abuse is cutting off easy access to unused drugs in home medicine cabinets,” said Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. “That’s why New York’s groundbreaking I-STOP law expanded on National Prescription Drug Take-Back Day to make medication drop boxes available year round all across the state. I encourage all New Yorkers to dispose of unneeded drugs at a local site on Take-Back Day, and to visit the Department of Health website to locate a year-round drop box.”
“Stopping drug abuse before it starts is the most effective way to combat addiction,” said County Executive Steve Bellone. “Cutting off the access that many people, particularly our youth, have in their own homes is one of the most effective tools we have in our arsenal. National Prescription Drug Take-Back Day aims to do just that. By properly disposing of unwanted or unused drugs we can eliminate the easiest access many users have to drugs and continue to curb the problem. I thank Attorney General Schneiderman for hosting today’s event and am proud to be partnering with his office on this crucial initiative.”
“This initiative addresses a vital public safety issue,” said Assemblywoman Kimberly Jean-Pierre. “There should be no reason to have prescriptions that are no longer in use at home. I’m proud to be part of this initiative”
“Prescription drug abuse is a growing epidemic in every community across Long Island, and is fueling the alarming rise in heroin abuse and overdose deaths,” said Babylon Town Supervisor Rich Schaffer. “This is the perfect opportunity for residents to clean out their medicine cabinets, make their homes safer, and protect our young people.”
Prescription drug overdoses, and the related problem of heroin overdoses, are a major problem on Long Island. Heroin and prescription opioid overdoses killed 341 people on Long Island in 2014.[1]As in previous years, the 2014 National Survey on Drug Use and Health found that the majority of abused prescription drugs are obtained from family and friends, including from the home medicine cabinet. The goal of take-back days is to close that avenue of access.
New York State has been a leader in addressing the prescription drug abuse crisis in innovative ways. The Attorney General’s Internet System for Tracking Over Prescribing Act (I-STOP) legislation, signed into law in 2012, established New York as the first state in the nation to mandate that physicians consult a real-time database – where pharmacists report every prescription they fill for a schedule II, III, IV, or V narcotic – to check a patient’s history before prescribing one of these powerful drugs. I-STOP mandated the rescheduling of hydrocodone to Schedule II, which ended automatic refills for this highly abused drug. The law also made New York the first state in the nation to mandate eventual universal e-prescribing.
I-STOP has been credited with helping reduce prescription drug abuse by addressing the problems of doctor shopping and the use of stolen or falsified prescriptions. In just a few months, more than 45,000 prescribers conducted approximately 2.4 million searches in the database. In the first three days of operation, these searches identified more than 200 instances of apparent doctor-shopping. With the help of the medical community, the State of New York has made substantial progress in mitigating the problems associated with opioid drug abuse.
I-STOP vastly enhances the effectiveness of New York’s prescription tracking system. Its goal is to enable doctors and pharmacists to provide prescription pain medications, and other controlled substances, to patients who truly need them. At the same time, it arms them with the necessary data to detect potentially dangerous drug interactions, identify patterns of abuse by patients, doctors and pharmacists, help those who suffer from crippling addictions and prevent potential addiction before it starts.
A.G. Schneiderman thanked the U.S. Department of Justice Drug Enforcement Administration and the New York State Department of Health for organizing National Prescription Drug Take-Back Day events across New York State.
