Reduce Non-Medical Access to Prescription Drugs

Key Information

Safe storage of prescription drugs within the home has been prioritized as a key strategy by many organizations and coalitions. Even if a community does an excellent job of reducing prescriptions and taking back or disposing of unused opioids, there will still be a lot of opioids in communities. Thirty-two percent of American adults received a prescription for opioids in the two years preceding 2018. In 2019, 22% of U.S. adults with chronic pain used a prescription opioid in the previous 3 months. Many people are legitimately being prescribed opioids for short-term pain management. These can be misused, stolen or accidentally consumed by children. Failure to securely store prescription drugs contributes to the opioid epidemic and other health hazards in several ways.

• Easy access to prescription drugs can lead to initial experimentation, especially by teens.

• Stealing prescription drugs, which is much easier when they are commonly available in unlocked medicine cabinets, is often a step toward more destructive misuse.

• Easy access to unsecured opioids or other prescription drugs contributes to theft by people who sell them or give them away.

• Children who access unsecured drugs sometimes take them, thinking they are candy.

Staggering Statistics

• Only 2 in 10 who have dangerous medications—such as opioid pain pills, stimulants used to treat ADHD, and sedatives—lock them up.

• A recent study of adults living in households with children found that prescription opioids were stored in a locked or latched place in only 32.6% of households with young children and 11.7% with older children.

• More than 1,600 teens begin abusing prescription drugs each day.

• 1 in every 4 teens in America say they have misused or abused a prescription drug at least once.

• 60,000 kids under the age of 5 accidentally ingest these dangerous drugs every year and wind up in emergency rooms.

• 12-17 year olds abuse prescription drugs more than ecstasy, heroin, crack/cocaine and methamphetamines combined.

• In one study, only 8.6% of the respondents reported locking up their opioid medication and only 20.9% reported using a latched location.

• The National Drug Intelligence Center notes that older people are especially vulnerable to theft of prescription drugs. They also indicate that over half of teens, ages 12 and up, obtained prescription drugs from a friend or family member "for free."

Succesful Strategies

There are four primary successful strategies for communities to consider. The four strategies are conducive for implementation in conjunction with each other, but are covered separately below:

• Campaigns - An information campaign enables a variety of sectors in the community to collaborate. For example, an awareness campaign could engage law enforcement in drug take-backs. When law enforcement hosts drop-off locations, it promotes the overall campaign. Health department staff could disseminate information. Schools could provide an avenue for reaching parents and informing them about the location of take-back events. Pharmacies and the businesses could be engaged in sponsoring the campaign. A few models of national campaigns are provided in the “Promising Practices” section below.

• Proper Disposal — In addition to take-backs and promotion of drop-off locations, there are medication neutralization kits that are available. These provide an appealing way to engage people to take action in a one-off event that increases their readiness to take more routine medication safety actions.

• Safe Storage — Increasing awareness about the importance of safe storage often goes hand-in-hand with providing members of the community free or affordable storage options. A variety of vendors associated with both safe storage and disposal products are listed in the “Available Tools and Resources” section below.

• Education— Families are generally more receptive to tips for medication safety than they might be for information about other forms of prevention. While any of the statistics above can be used in an education campaigns, some basic ideas can get people thinking about their own practices in a new way. For example, most people have not considered that it makes sense to keep a medication log or an inventory of all their medication types and amounts. Updating their inventory every six to twelve months keeps medication safety in their awareness. Likewise, people are ready to recall that the medicine cabinet in a bathroom is often not the best place to store prescriptions, since they should be stored in a cool, dry place. Humidity, heat, and the change in temperatures in the bathroom can alter the potency of some medications, and some storage devices can help protect medications from humidity, even if they are stored in bathrooms. This is a good lead-in to building a desire to obtain a lock-box.