Photo by Charles Williams/Flickr Creative Commons
Prescription drug misuse appears to have caught the eye of Attorney General Eric Holder, who earlier this month announced an expansion of a prescription drug return program that would allow hospitals, pharmacies and other authorized entities to accept excess drugs, namely opioid painkillers and antidepressants, though other drugs will be accepted as well.
According to the Substance and Mental Health Services Association, nonmedical use of prescription drugs—with an 8.8% rate of past-year nonmedical use as of 2013—is the second most prevalent illicit drug use category among individuals from age 18 to 25, second only to marijuana.
“As attorney general—and a parent—I am committed to ending the national epidemic that has already stolen too many lives and torn apart too many families,” Attorney General Eric Holder said in a video announcing the initiative.
Some students say they suspect these numbers of nonmedical use are due to students having excess prescription drugs on-hand.
“Excess prescription drugs among students may lead to said surpluses being sold or shared with other students, particularly in the cases of ‘study aids’ such as Adderall and Ritalin,” says Chrislyn Laurore, a junior at Mount Holyoke College. “While this may seem harmless, prescription medications are not one-size-fits-all and may have different, or even severe, effects on those who are not meant to take them.”
It remains unclear whether—or, rather, how many—on-campus pharmacies will take part in the drug return expansion, as campus pharmacies (as well as off-campus pharmacies) would have to apply to become authorized collectors, according to DEA special agent Joseph Moses.
“Registrants need to apply to modify to apply their registrations to become authorized collectors,” Moses says. “That’s very easy. They can do that online… As long as they register to become an authorized collector, get their registrations modified to be collectors and, second part, the registrants must be authorized already to handle Schedule II controlled substances in order to become an authorized collector.”
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Still, some students hope that their campuses will participate in the expansion.
“I do hope that my campus pharmacy will accept prescription drug returns,” says Melanie Carle, a senior at the University of Florida. “It is nonsensical for healthcare professionals not to provide a disposal method … It is asking for them to fall into the wrong hands, or be used outside of a medically necessary period. A proper disposal facility is the only appropriate solution, and for many students, the campus pharmacy is the most—or only—accessible venue.”
Some universities already accept expired, unused and unwanted prescription drugs as part of the Drug Enforcement Agency’s National Prescription Drug Take-Back Day, which takes place this week. The DEA has hosted eight national take-back events since 2010.
“MTSU Campus Pharmacy and University Police are sponsoring the fourth drug take back event for the MTSU campus on Thursday,” Lisa Schrader, director of health promotion at Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU), said via email. “Last spring, 60 pounds of medicine were collected at this MTSU collection event.”
Schrader also said that most of the drugs returned in MTSU’s collection events have come not from students, but from university employees.
“In our own drug take back events, the vast majority of medicines that are turned in come from employees who face more chronic medical conditions and/or have had recently deceased relatives with large quantities of excess medicines.”
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Drug take-back programs allow individuals to safely dispose of unwanted or unused prescription drugs instead of sitting in at home in a medicine bottle, where the pills run a risk of being abused or misused by friends or family.
Data from the NSDUH indicated that more than half of nonmedical users of pain relievers, tranquilizers, stimulants and sedatives obtained the prescription drugs they most recently used “from a friend or relative for free.” More than 80% of these non-medical users indicated that those drugs had been obtained legally from a doctor.
Zoe Sanders, a senior at Fordham University, says that she feels Holder’s announcement will have little effect on college students.
“Sadly, I fear that this announcement won’t affect college students too much,” Sanders says. “There isn’t enough education about prescription medications to college students. An alarming amount of students I’ve encountered are lacking in knowledge about how to safely get rid of their medications, or even that you can’t offer them to others even if they are showing the same symptoms.”
Jarvis Ramil, a sophomore at the University of South Florida, also says he feels that college students are undereducated about prescription drugs.
“Students often don’t realize that some of these prescription drugs have expiration dates and/or only have a certain shelf life,” Ramil says.
Carle says she hopes the expansion of the DEA’s drug take-back program will bring light to what she sees as an often-ignored problem.
“On my campus, I have not heard about prescription drug use as a problem once,” Carle says. “There is a huge emphasis on alcohol abuse and illicit drug use, but prescription misuse is also a major issue. Hopefully, with this new DEA program, more attention will be brought to this problem.”
Canton Winer is a senior at Fordham University.
Filed under: VOICES FROM CAMPUS Tagged: Canton Winer, Drug Enforcement Agency, excess medication, medication