The National Prescription Drug Take Back Day addresses a crucial public safety and public health issue. According to the 2015 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 6.4 million Americans abused controlled prescription drugs. The study shows that a majority of abused prescription drugs were obtained from family and friends, often from the home medicine cabinet. The DEA’s Take Back Day events provide an opportunity for Americans to prevent drug addiction and overdose deaths. The next Take Back Day is on April 28, 2018 from 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM. Need to dispose of prescription drugs before the next Take Back Day? Click here to locate a year-round authorized collector in your area.To access the 2018 Take Back Tool Box, click here  

The public returns record number of potentially dangerous prescription drugs Americans nationwide did their part to reduce the opioid crisis by bringing the DEA and its more than 4,200 local and tribal law enforcement partners a record-setting 912,305 pounds-456 tons-of potentially dangerous expired, unused, and unwanted prescription drugs for disposal at more than 5,300 collection sites. That is almost six tons more than was collected at last spring's event.This brings the total amount of prescription drugs collected by DEA since the fall of 2010 to 9,015,668 pounds, or 4,508 tons. Now in its 8th year, National Prescription Drug Take Back Day events continue to remove ever-higher amounts of opioids and other medicines from the nation's homes, where they could be stolen and abused by family members and visitors, including children and teens. The DEA action comes just days after President Donald J. Trump announced the mobilization of his entire Administration to...

On Saturday, October 28, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. the Drug Enforcement Administration will give the public its 14th opportunity in 7 years to prevent pill abuse and theft by ridding their homes of potentially dangerous expired, unused, and unwanted prescription drugs. The service is free and anonymous, no questions asked. Last April Americans turned in 450 tons (900,000 pounds) of prescription drugs at almost 5,500 sites operated by the DEA and more than 4,200 of its state and local law enforcement partners. Overall, in its 13 previous Take Back events, DEA and its partners have taken in over 8.1 million pounds—more than 4,050 tons—of pills. This initiative addresses a vital public safety and public health issue. Medicines that languish in home cabinets are highly susceptible to diversion, misuse, and abuse. Rates of prescription drug abuse in the U.S. are alarmingly high, as are the number of accidental poisonings and...

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and more than 4,200 of its law enforcement and community partners collected more unused prescription drugs than at any of the 12 previous National Prescription Drug Take Back Day events. On Saturday, April 29, the event brought in 900,386 pounds (450 tons) at close to 5,500 sites across the nation. Marking the 13th National Prescription Take Back Day since September 2010, these events have altogether collected 8,103,363 pounds (4,052 tons) of prescription drugs. The National Prescription Drug Take Back Day Initiative addresses a crucial public safety and public health issue. According to the 2015 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 6.4 million Americans abused controlled prescription drugs. The study shows that a majority of abused prescription drugs were obtained from family and friends, often from the home medicine cabinet. The DEA’s Take Back Day events provide an opportunity for Americans to prevent drug addiction and...

A new study finds heroin use in the United States has risen fivefold in the past decade, with the biggest rise seen among whites and men with low incomes and education levels. Dependence on heroin use more than tripled during the last 10 years, Reuters reports. The biggest increase was seen among whites ages 18 to 44, researchers report in JAMA Psychiatry. The increase has been fueled partly by the misuse of opioid prescription drugs, the study concluded. Researchers from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health found that in 2001-2002, 36 percent of whites using heroin had taken prescription opioids non-medically before they started using heroin, compared to 53 percent in 2012-2013. “Because the effects of heroin seem so similar to widely available prescription opioids, heroin use appears to have become more socially acceptable among suburban and rural whites,” lead researcher Silvia Martins, MD, PhD, said in a news release.

The number of grandparents raising their grandchildren is going up and increasingly it’s because their own kids are addicted to heroin or prescription drugs, or have died from an overdose. For some, it’s a challenge with little help available. In 2005, 2.5 million children were living with grandparents who were responsible for their care. By 2015, that number had risen to 2.9 million. According to PBS Newshour, child welfare officials say drug addiction, especially to opioids, is behind much of the rise in the number of grandparents raising their grandchildren, just as it was during the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s and ’90s. An estimated 2.4 million people were addicted to opioids at last count. Caseworkers in many states say a growing number of children are neglected or abandoned by parents who are addicted. That has forced them to take emergency steps to handle a growing crisis in foster care...

Almost 60 percent of Americans say they have opioid painkillers at home that they no longer use, according to a new survey. Twenty percent say they have shared their opioid pills with another person. Almost 75 percent of those who shared their prescription said they did so to help someone else manage their pain, The Washington Post reports. An additional 17 percent said they shared their medication because the other person couldn’t afford medication or did not have insurance. The finding are published in JAMA Internal Medicine. Researcher Colleen L. Barry of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health said the survey indicates that many Americans do not realize sharing opioids can have non-intended consequences for people who are susceptible to addiction. She said health officials need to send “a clear-cut public health message that these medications should never be shared in any circumstance.” The survey found only 21 percent...

States that use prescription drug monitoring programs have seen a 30 percent decrease in the rate of prescriptions written for opioid painkillers, a new study finds. “This reduction was seen immediately following the launch of the program and was maintained in the second and third years afterward,” the researchers wrote in the journal Health Affairs. NBC News reports the researchers from Weill Cornell Medical College in New York are not certain why the programs reduce opioid prescriptions. “It is possible that the implementation of a prescription drug monitoring program by itself substantially raised awareness among prescribers about controlled substance misuse and abuse and made them more cautious when prescribing pain medications with a great potential for abuse and dependency,” they wrote. “It is also possible that knowing that their prescribing was being ‘watched’ deterred them from prescribing Schedule II opioids to some extent,” they added. According to the Drug Enforcement Administration,...

A rise in drug overdoses contributed to the increasing U.S. death rate last year, according to a new report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The death rate increased for the first time in a decade, The New York Times reports. The overall death rate increased to 729.5 deaths per 100,000 people in 2015, up from 723.2 in 2014. The CDC found the death rate for drug overdoses increased to 15.2 per 100,000 people in the second quarter of 2015, compared with 14.1 in the second quarter the previous year. The rate for unintentional injuries, which include drug overdoses and car accidents, increased to 42 per 100,000 in the third quarter last year, up from 39.9 in the same quarter the previous year. More people also died from suicide and Alzheimer’s disease last year, the report found. The findings are preliminary, and are not broken down by race,...

A new study that finds opioid use increases chronic pain in rats may have important implications for humans, according to researchers from the University of Colorado-Boulder. The researchers found that rats who received morphine for five days experienced chronic pain that continued for several months, by triggering the release of pain signals from spinal cord immune cells called glial cells. The findings may help explain the recent surge in prescription painkiller addiction, Forbes reports. “We are showing for the first time that even a brief exposure to opioids can have long-term negative effects on pain,” study author Peter Grace said in a news release. “We found the treatment was contributing to the problem.” Study co-author Linda Watkins added, “The implications for people taking opioids like morphine, oxycodone and methadone are great, since we show the short-term decision to take such opioids can have devastating consequences of making pain worse and longer...