Local and state law enforcement officials are lining up behind a bill that would help people get unused prescription drugs out of their medicine cabinets.
Senate Bill 5234 would create a non-profit organization that collects, transports and disposes of drugs from residents.
The new nonprofit would be funded by the pharmaceutical companies, with its board of directors as representatives of various drug companies.
The bill would take this job from federal and local authorities. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, in conjunction with local law enforcement agencies has hosted a number of National Take Back Days, in which people bring their unused prescriptions for safe removal.
Bellevue Police Chief Linda Pillo said the city has staffed and participated in three such days, but that is not nearly enough. As much as Pillo would like to run her own take back program, declining revenue has made that impossible, leaving it up to private sources.
“We’re losing resources every year, and to then add a take back program where we have to dispose of drugs at hazardous waste sites, we just don’t have enough resources to do that,” Pillo said.
Drug take back bills are nothing new in the state legislature. In three consecutive sessions lawmakers have put forth such a bill, only to see it fail. SB 5234 did not make it out of the Senate Rules Committee last year.
For proponents of the bill, drug disposal is both a health issue, and an environmental one. Margaret Shields, policy liaison for the Local Hazardous Waste Program, said unused medicine can often fall into the hands of teenagers, and lead to overdoses. Chief Pillo said nearly half of the 37,000 annual calls to the State Poison Control Center involve kids poisoned by household prescriptions. Additionally, medicine thrown in the trash or flushed down the toilet can seep into drinking water.
Law enforcement officials and proponents of the bill worry that these drugs will be swiped from medicine cabinets and sold on the street.
“Let’s face it, if Grandma has them in the medicine cabinet – maybe vicodins, oxycodones – some young man or woman in the household doesn’t need them but sure would like them,” said 37th District Sen. Adam Kline (D-Seattle). “And they get to the high school, they get out to sale, they’re in the black market, they’re all over.”
Many pharmaceutical companies have fought these bills, arguing that they can lead to drug theft, and they have not decreased the number of deaths due to overdose or helped water quality.
“I’m all about trying to solve this problem,” said State Sen. Jim Kastama (D-Puyallup). “But if I’m going to ask someone to spend a potential hundreds of thousands of dollars, I want to be able to say to the public that this is actually going to be able to make a difference. I’ve asked for this now for probably three years and no one can show that it actually makes a tangible difference.”
The bill is awaiting a vote in the Senate Rules Committee. Supporters are confident that this is the year it will be passed. A new provision caps the cost to companies at $2.5 million, or Shields said, one penny for every $16 in sales.
