Drug Mail Back Program Seen as Early Success
Contact: Jennifer Crittenden, (207) 262-7920; George Manlove, 581-3756
ORONO — The first-in-the-nation pharmaceuticals mail-back program launched this summer by the University of Maine’s Center on Aging in conjunction with 18 partners is being heralded as an early success.
The public is still just learning about the availability of the new Safe Medicine Disposal for ME program, but Len Kaye, director of the Center on Aging, and Jennifer Crittenden, program manager, say 35 packets of unwanted or unneeded medicines already have been mailed to the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency’s Westbrook post office box.
“The program is just getting under way. It’s the first week or so of implementation,” Kaye says. “The public needs to know envelopes remain available, 1,800 in all.”
Self-addressed drug mail-back envelopes are available for consumers at 11 pharmacies in Penobscot, Kennebec, Cumberland and Aroostook counties as part of the phase 1 of the pilot project. As phase 2 gets under way, 7,200 more envelopes will be distributed to dozens more participating pharmacies throughout Maine.
In the planning stages for several years, the program received a $150,000 grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency about a year ago to get it started. The program was created to help cut the flow of tons of medications into the environment.
Kathy Sykes, the EPA’s grants officer on the project and senior adviser of the EPA’s Aging Initiative, is in Bangor this week reviewing project accomplishments. Sykes says she considers the Safe Medicine Disposal for ME project “a cutting-edge initiative addressing in very practical ways an issue of critical importance to individuals of all ages.”
The pharmaceuticals mail-back program is considered important by healthcare professionals, law enforcement, environmentalists and others because of the harm caused to people, wildlife and the environment when unneeded or expired medications are tossed in the trash or flushed down toilets. Ridding home medicine cabinets of unneeded pharmaceuticals can prevent children or thieves from getting their hands on narcotics and other medicines, and reduce patient overdosing from inadvertently mixing medications. Also, wildlife specialists have documented biological changes in wildlife as a result of ingesting medications dissolved in rivers, streams and other water bodies.
Many drugs — including those prescribed for blood pressure and cholesterol management, depression, pain, pregnancy prevention, erectile dysfunction, infections and disease control — do not break down into harmless substances, according to Kaye and members of the Maine Benzodiazepine Study Group (MBSG), which formed several years ago to combat the casual disposal of unwanted drugs. Even after drugs are taken appropriately, they remain in the environment as they pass through humans and even waste treatment plants and end up in water bodies. Medicines also leach through landfills into groundwater. Even if landfill leachate is trucked off to wastewater treatment plants, residual chemicals from the drugs still can make their way through the treatment process.
The only reliable way to destroy many drugs is incineration, according to the MBSG.
In addition to the Maine Center on Aging, the Maine DEA and U.S. EPA, other agencies, businesses and organizations lending support to the program include the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, U.S. Postal Service, Community Medical Foundation for Patient Safety, Rite Aid Pharmacies, Maine Office of Elder Services, Maine Office of Substance Abuse, Maine Association of Psychiatric Physicians, Maine Office of the Attorney General, Maine Pharmacy Association, Polyair Manufacturing, Maine RSVP Programs, Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center, National Council on Patient Information and Education, Northern New England Poison Center, Villanova University Center for the Environment, the Maine Council for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and individual participating pharmacies throughout Maine.
Postage-paid, mail-back envelopes currently are available at the following pharmacies:
Caribou: Rite Aid Pharmacy, 112 Bennett Drive, 498-8735; Houlton: Rite Aid Pharmacy, 137 North Street, 532-6876; Indian Island: Penobscot Nation Health Center Pharmacy, 23 Wabanaki Way, 817-7435; Bangor: Miller Drug, 210 State St., 1-800-427-8369; Bangor: Penobscot Community Health Center Pharmacy, 1084 Union St., 992-4100; Old Town: Helen Hunt Health Center Pharmacy, 242 Brunswick St., Old Town, 992-4100; Augusta: Rite Aid Pharmacy, 83 Hospital St., 623-1414; Augusta: Rite Aid Pharmacy, 2007 No. Belfast Ave., 622-2626; Waterville: Rite Aid Pharmacy, 211 Main St., 877-9004; Portland: Rite Aid Pharmacy, 365 Allen Ave., 797-4351; and Scarborough: Rite Aid Pharmacy, 600 U.S. Route 1, 885-1515.
The program is free, voluntary and confidential. Information about the program and the Center on Aging is available by calling 1-866-637-9743, or select the link to Safe Medicine Disposal for ME Program under “UMCoA News” on the Center on Aging website (www.umaine.edu/mainecenteronaging).