Friday, April 5, 2019
Spring is here and many households are starting their first round of spring cleaning. While tidying up, it is important for Hoosiers to keep Medication Safety Week, April 1-7, in mind as it is a good reminder to clean out medicine cabinets to remove any unused or unwanted prescriptions so they don’t end up in the wrong hands.
Throughout this week, the Women’s Heart Foundation has been encouraging safe medication use, storage and disposal by promoting a different theme each day, including cleaning out your medicine cabinet, medicine organization and medicine label literacy.
Click here for more information on Medication Safety Week.
Ensuring proper medication use and disposal is imperative, as our nation is in the middle of an opioid abuse epidemic, and Indiana is no exception.
According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, opioids include the illegal drug heroin, synthetic opioids like fentanyl, and pain relievers available by prescription. In 2016, there were 296 heroin-related deaths and 488 opioid pain reliever-related deaths reported in Indiana.
Sometimes, people get prescription drugs from their family or friends, often from a medicine cabinet.
To help prevent this, the Indiana Department of Environmental Management has partnered with the Prescription Drug Abuse Prevention Task Force to promote safe disposal practices in Indiana.
Indiana has several collection sites available where residents can drop off unwanted or expired medications. Some pharmacies also offer postage-paid envelopes that are used to mail in noncontrolled substances for disposal.
Click here for information on proper medicine disposal practices and to find a drop-off location near you.
