[Pharmwaste] National Association of Boards of Pharmacy Adopts Unwanted Medication Resolution at Annual Meeting

[Lynn Rubinstein]

Hello.  Last week the NABP adopted a resolution that the Northeast Recycling 
Council, Inc. (NERC) drafted and submitted.  The next step is to work with 
them in drafting model language for Boards of Pharmacies to adopt to make it 
clear that Pharmacists may participate in collections without risk to their 
licenses.

The resolution states:

TITLE:                         To Develop Legal and Environmentally Safe 
Programs For

                                                The Consumer Disposal of 
Unwanted Medications



_______________________________________________________________________



Whereas consumers often do not consume the entire quantity of a prescribed 
medication; and



Whereas, although a majority of pharmaceutical water pollution is due to the 
incomplete metabolization of medication, there is also pollution that is the 
result of  the flushing and discarding in the trash of unwanted medication; 
and



Whereas there is an increasing incidence of criminal activity related to 
securing medication from the home and the trash, as well as an increasing 
incidence of a practice called "pharming", whereby individuals steal 
prescription medications and ingest all of them at the same time for 
recreational purposes; and



Whereas in many states a significant number of home breaking and enterings 
are solely for the purpose of the theft of prescription medications; and



Whereas consumers with excess or unwanted medication often share their 
medication with other individuals in the absence of any medical supervision;



THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that Boards of Pharmacy should work with the 
pharmacy community, the environmental community, and other regulatory 
agencies to develop environmental safe and legal programs whereby consumers 
can safely and properly rid themselves of unwanted medication for safe and 
thorough destruction; and



THEREFORE BE IT FURTHER REOLVED that NABP should develop model rules for 
Boards of Pharmacy to adopt that would provide a consistent process whereby 
the pharmacy community could become engaged in the environmentally safe and 
legal collection and destruction of unwanted medications from consumers.