Several events making news here in the good ol' US of A have demonstrated a strong level of ignorance or maybe it's just simple stupidty. The first events was a front page story several weeks back which announced that traces of many forms of prescribed medications were showing up in the public drinking water.
Naturally, following the story about prescription medication drugs being found in the public drinking water, there was a period of strong concern raised by the public. Several public officials were interviewed and they indicated that the filtration systems at the various pumping stations were not capable of filtering out any form of presciption drugs. We were left scratching our heads over this matter until another television show, I think it was 20/20 aired.
One of the reports described how nursing homes are flushing huge quantities of prescription medications down the toilet. The nursing home administrator explained on camera, that under standardized procedures they are required to dispose of all drugs prescribed for nursing home residents, when the residents leave the nursing home; either at the conclusion of a rehabilitation stay or if the resident becomes deceased. All of the medications had to be removed from their shrink wrapped plastic containers and dumped into buckets for flushing down the toilet. The interviewer watching this assembly line setup for medication disposal asked, "Why not recycle this medication and give it to people who can't afford to buy their own prescribed medication?" The answer was essentially the same, that the disposal procedures requires them to flush all drugs down the toilet. The administrator admitted that even though less than 10% of the drugs being flushed down the toilet were narcotic, the procedure requiired that all drugs be disposed in this manner.
Evidently, some effort has been started in some states to persuade legislators to consider some form of legislation that would make these drugs available to extremely poor people, who currently cannot buy these prescriptions. However, little legislative movement has occurred thus far.
I am certain that the drug companies will fight any attempt to recycle these medications tooth and nail. However, I don't want these drugs showing up in my drinking water and I certainly don't want my kids drinking water that is laced with a prescription drug nightmare cocktail. Right now, I think a lot of the politicians would like to keep looking the other way with the hope that this does not become an issue. "Talk about bioterrorism!" There are numerous ways that these medications can be disposed of, but contanimation of the public water supply MUST NOT continue to be an option.