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SALT LAKE CITY — More people die in Utah from prescription drug abuse than car accidents and that number is up 31 percent in the last three years.
The Utah Department of Health and Intermountain Healthcare announced a campaign Thursday to raise awareness about the dangers of unused pain meds in your home and a new and easy way to dispose of them.
About a quarter of all Utahns have leftover prescription pain medications in their homes — unused pills that are tossed into a drawer and forgotten about. This increases the opportunity for misuse, abuse or theft. It's a growing problem in Utah, said Dr. Robert Rolfs, deputy director of Utah’s Department of Health.
"It's one of the most important health problems that's come around in the past 10 or 20 years,” he said.
Statistics show that about 550 Utahns die each year from prescription drug overdoses and Utah ranks 5th in the nation in that category.
The increase in overdoses is partly because new pain medications have been developed over the years, so more get prescribed, and the opportunities for abuse and addiction increase. That's why the state's health department launched this campaign to encourage the safe use, storage and disposal of all prescription medications.
You're not supposed to flush them down the toilet, you're not supposed to throw them in the trash; you're supposed to put them in a special collection site.But there haven't been too many of those.
–Dr. Robert Rolfs
"You're not supposed to flush them down the toilet, you're not supposed to throw them in the trash; you're supposed to put them in a special collection site,” Rolfs said. “But there haven't been too many of those."
At nearly two dozen of its community pharmacies across the state, Intermountain has installed secure drop-off boxes, called "Med Safes." Utah is one of a few states in the nation installing these. If you have unused medications, you can deposit them in the boxes for proper disposal.
“We just want to make sure that, knowing that people are dropping off, we want to make sure they're safe and secure,” said Buck Stanford, community pharmacy operations director for Intermountain. “That's why they're double-locked, they're secure in the pharmacies. They are in the over-the-counter area."
Intermountain will spend $300,000 in each of the next three years on the awareness campaign. In addition to the drop-off boxes, there will also be signs and messages on pharmacy receipts. Large pill-bottle hourglasses will be on pharmacy counters to encourage conversation between patients and medical staff.
