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Tuesday, February 9, 2010 |
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Teens seek better disposal of prescriptions
Published November 12, 2009
SEGUIN — What’s the most dangerous place in an American home?
It might just be the medicine cabinet.
What’s in there? Many people have old unused painkiller prescriptions or other drugs or medications that can be dangerous if misused and are sometimes illegal to use or possess without a prescription.
If they haven’t disposed of them, it might be because a satisfactory system for disposing of unneeded medications doesn’t exist.
Few recycling programs accept them, although the city of San Marcos recently conducted a “return day” for unused prescription drugs.
Officials responsible for the nation’s water supply say such drugs should never be flushed because many of the chemicals that make them up cannot be removed from drinking water. Likewise, waste management officials don’t recommend dumping bottles of pills in landfills.
What do you do?
It’s a good question, and this year’s Seguin Youth Leadership Academy, a group of more than a dozen students from area high schools learning about leadership and community service, has set a town hall meeting at 6:30 p.m. at the Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority’s River Annex off Nolan Street.
Government officials, medical professionals, retailers, waste managers and citizens are all invited to discuss the issue of safe disposal of medications and consider what might be done to address it.
The meeting will include presentations, a panel discussion and questions and answers. Guadalupe County Chief Juvenile Probation Officer Ron Quiros, who advises the SYLA students, will moderate.
“We just want to put the problem out there, and we’re hoping someone has ideas that could solve it,” said this year’s SYLA class president, Rebecca Trammell. “We’re hoping to raise community awareness and hope someone will take it and run with it.”
The SYLA tried to do exactly that, and ran into roadblocks every step of the way.
Sponsored by the Seguin Area Chamber of Commerce, the SYLA began looking into the issue last summer, and Trammell says what the students learned was surprising — drug stores can’t take the drugs back, no good disposal system exists and the problem is a nationwide one, not just a Seguin or Guadalupe County issue, that threatens the health and welfare of teens who might abuse the drugs and the quality of the nation’s water supply should they be dumped down the sink or flushed down a commode.
The students decided it would be a good community service to create a drug take-back program here in Seguin, and they immediately ran up against a legal wall.
No one under age 18 can legally handle the drugs, only specialized companies have the expertise and licensing necessary to safely handle them, and a police officer or medical professional would be required to be on hand at any turn-in event.
Most medicine cabinets do not lock, and many unused medications find their way into schools, where an arrest for illegal possession of a prescription drug can result in serious criminal charges, even for a high school kid.
The problem is such a big one that County Attorney Elizabeth Murray-Kolb has begun a series of talks in the county’s high schools warning kids not to bring prescription meds to school and of the criminal penalties if they’re caught.
“We talk about the fact that ordinarily, you think of a controlled substance being crack, heroin or methamphetamine, but it also includes many prescription pills, and they can’t bring those to school at all,” Murray-Kolb said.
Murray-Kolb said it is important to note that kids aren’t allowed to administer any medications to themselves in local schools — not even Tylenol. Any medications must be brought to the school nurse in their original packaging with the doctor’s instructions intact, and the nurse will administer them.
Steele High School senior Michael Magtalas worked on the information gathering that went into the SYLA project.
He said he’s seen students taking pills at school, but had always presumed in the past they were under prescription. Now, he’s not so sure.
“I’d presumed they were actually prescriptions, but in one or two cases, I’ve seen kids bring pills out of a bag and show them around,” he said.
It would be good to develop a convenient, workable program for disposing of the meds, Magtalas said.
“Everyone has prescription medications they don’t use or need,” Magtalas said. “I think it’s a big issue, not just in Schertz or Seguin, but nationwide.
But what to do?
Magtalas isn’t sure.
“Different people say different things,” he said. “We went to local pharmacies, and they all said different things, too. Some said flush them, some said burn them. Nobody has a clear answer for how to properly dispose of these drugs. I’d like to see someone agree this is a problem, pick it up and run with it.”
The Seguin Youth Leadership Academy is conducting a town hall meeting at 6:30 p.m. to raise awareness of the problems associated with properly disposing of prescription drugs. The public is invited. For information, e-mail syla2009(at)gmail.com .
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