Drug disposal bill a first
AUGUSTA – Pickerel on Prozac? Bass on birth control? Trout on pain medication?
Doctors have long recommended that patients flush unused prescription medications down the toilet. But because so many have done that, “we’ve got Prozac in our streams, birth control pills in our rivers, ibuprofen in our creeks,” said environmentalist Naomi Schalit of the Maine Rivers organization.
Schalit and others Wednesday called for an apparently first-in-the-nation law encouraging the proper disposal of old prescriptions. The law aims at protecting the environment as well as reducing the number of medications that could pose harm to others or be sold on the street.
When flushed, the drugs often go into sewage treatment systems not designed to filter them out. From there they end up in the environment, Schalit said, noting, “It doesn’t go into Neverland.”
Bill supporters at Wednesday’s public hearing said researchers have discovered the active ingredient in Prozac in the tissue of freshwater fish in Texas.
Sen. Lynn Bromley, D-South Portland, is sponsoring the law, which would allow consumers to mail unused prescription drugs to the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency for disposal. The program would be voluntarily.
Consumers would be provided pre-paid envelopes under the law. It would not require state taxpayer money, Bromley said, because she plans to seek private grant money or federal money to implement the program, and will ask pharmaceutical companies to donate to the program or advertise on its behalf.
It is not known what drugs or what amounts may be in Maine waters, but a 2002 survey by the U.S. Geological Survey found that 80 percent of streams sampled showed evidence of drugs, hormones or steroids, Schalit said.
Environmentalists want Maine fish to be happy “because they’re swimming in clean water, not because they’re blissed out on Prozac,” she said.
Dr. Steve Gressitt of Bangor, who spoke in favor of Bromley’s bill Wednesday, said he was trained to tell patients to flush unused medicine down the toilet. “I confess,” he said.
The idea was to get rid of unused medicine so that others wouldn’t be harmed by them, but the environment wasn’t being considered, Gressitt said.
A member of the Maine Benzodiazepine Study Group, Gressitt said putting medicine in the environment also worries health professionals concerned about the growing ineffectiveness of antibiotics because of their prevalence.
Supporters said incentives to clean out medicine cabinets and properly dispose of old prescriptions would also diminish the potential for prescription abuse and help prevent suicides and accidental poisonings.
While no other states have this kind of law, Canadian pilot programs have collected tons of unused prescription drugs, Gressitt said. In Maine, it is estimated nine tons of unused medications would be collected each year, medicine now being flushed, thrown out or still sitting in cabinets, Bromley said.
The bill has the backing of the Maine Medical Association, which voted last year to endorse the idea, according to spokesman Gordon Smith.
One member of the Health and Human Services Committee hearing the bill Wednesday, Sen. Carol Weston, R-Montville, said she liked the idea, but has concerns about drugs going through the mail. The committee will hold a work session on the bill Feb. 25.
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