Student pharmacists help dispose rather than dispense

Where do all the unused drugs go? If you tossed or flushed them, you did the wrong thing.

On April 30, MUSC College of Pharmacy students stepped up to help the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) with DEA National Prescription Take Back Day, a biannual event advertised by the DEA to help bring awareness to communities that there is a way to safely dispose of unwanted, unused, or expired medications.

MUSC’s student chapter of the American Pharmacists Association (APhA) put together an Operation Substance Use Disorders’ Team (Melissa Ferris, Jennifer Smith, and Victoria Isgett) which spread the word to pharmacies and beyond.

“The public may not be aware that flushing medications down the toilet or throwing them in your everyday garbage does more harm than good,” Isgett said. “For example, drugs being flushed ultimately end up polluting our water system and work its way back to being ingested into bodies unknowingly. It is extremely important to bring awareness to safety disposal locations in the area to reduce the number of unnecessary or expired medications that are in people’s homes and on the street to keep the community safe.”

The team asked their organization to tell their friends and jobs about the event and the APhA-Academy of Student Pharmacists communications vice president, Alexandra Otto, helped to create reminder posts on the APhA-ASP Instagram page. By hosting the event, and advertising to local pharmacies in the area, the chapter was able to collect a total of 35.26 pounds of medication to turn into the DEA.

Isgett teamed up with MUSC Public Safety to set up a tented location in front of the Bioengineering Building and have a convenient location for individuals to drive up and drop off their medications for disposal. The process was completed by public safety officer Lt. Patrick Kelly, who accompanied her during Saturday’s event.

While DEA National Prescription Take Back Day creates awareness and provides convenience, Isgett noted that the public can safely dispose of their medications at any time through the MUSC Public Safety Office NADDI box (National Association of Drug Diversion Investigators). Lt. Kelly previously had 51.40 pounds of prescription medications that had been turned in for disposal before Saturday’s event, so the total weight turned in to the DEA on Saturday for disposal from MUSC was 86.66 pounds.