If you’ve got unwanted or expired medication in your home, what do you do with it?
You may think the easiest solution is simply to toss it in the trash or flush it down the toilet, but this would be a grave mistake.
Drugs disposed of through this method run the risk of falling into the wrong hands, including young children and teens who may come across it in your trash, and harming the environment by seeping into the groundwater and our landfills.
Luckily, there’s a better way.
Northampton County mailed Deterra pouches to all residents and you are able to order additional pouches on our Get Deterra page. These special pouches effectively destroy all medications placed inside them, allowing for safe disposal. The pouches are also available for businesses and healthcare offices throughout Northampton County, in addition to personal use. With a plant-based design, it’s an ecologically friendly way to permanently dispose of the harmful drugs, preventing misuse, theft or accidental ingestion. These pouches also help keep the drugs from entering our landfills and water systems, which unfortunately can occur with traditional disposal.
With our Fake Is Real Campaign, we are highlighting how the simple, easy to use Deterra pouch is an effective way to get rid of your old medication.
You can find out how it works here.
To order Deterra pouches directly, visit our Get Deterra page.
In addition, for those with a surplus of old medications, the Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs provides more than 200 drop boxes throughout Northampton County through its Drug Take-Back Program. Visit the Department of Human Services Building, the County Courthouse, or check the Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs (DDAP) website for your nearest drop-off location. By using Deterra pouches, we can prevent more than 6 million prescriptions from falling into the wrong hands.
Aside from prescription pills, the Deterra Pouch has the ability to deactivate a variety of drugs, making them unusable, including pills, patches, liquids, creams, and films.
You can also read more about how the product works by visiting the Deterra website.
The pouch has proven to be a powerful drug deactivator. According to the Deterra product website, research conducted under the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) contract found the activated carbon in Deterra to be highly effective in absorbing and deactivating pharmaceuticals. The research also found that 95% of consumers had no difficulty using the Deterra Pouch, with 96% of respondents using the Deterra Pouch within 4 weeks of receiving it.
Moreover, various research studies have shown that the Deterra Pouch successfully deactivated nearly 100 percent of the drugs tested. It’s important to note that with a strong opioid such as fentanyl, traces of the drug can remain after it’s used. According to the FDA website, “the fentanyl patch is an example of a product that contains a powerful opioid medicine that can be dangerous to people it’s not prescribed for. This adhesive patch delivers a strong pain medicine through the skin.
Even after a patch is used, a lot of the medicine remains.”
Improperly disposing of unwanted medication runs the risk of exposing young children and pets to the drugs as the potential exists for them to accidentally or willingly ingest them. Children and pets are naturally curious and may ingest items they come across in the home that adults may not notice. Why risk it? Likewise, in a home with older adults, the potential exists for confusion over which medications to take, and if harmful or expired medications are in the household, the risk is there for an accidental dosage. Remove the risk and you can help them stay safe. For households with teens, it’s important to talk to them about the dangers of opioid abuse and this includes helping them stay safe by removing harmful drugs from the home. Furthermore, with use of the Deterra pouch, the risk to the environment is greatly reduced since the drugs can’t contaminate groundwater or seep into our landfills.
So for a way to keep your loved ones safe and do your part to prevent damage to our environment, there’s an easy solution to get rid of your unwanted medications. Our Fake Is Real campaign can provide you with the tools you need. Together, we can help prevent unnecessary deaths from overdoses.
