Six in ten adults prescribed opioid painkillers have leftover pills
The researchers, reporting June 13, 2016 in JAMA Internal Medicine , also found that nearly half of those surveyed reported receiving no information on how to safely store their medications, either to keep them from young children who could accidentally ingest them or from adolescents or other adults looking to get high. Nor were they given information on how to safely dispose of their medications. Fewer than seven percent of people with extra pills reported taking advantage of "take back" programs that enable patients to turn in unused pain medication either to pharmacies , police departments or the Drug Enforcement Administration for disposal. "These painkillers are much riskier than has been understood and the volume of prescribing and use has contributed to an opioid epidemic in this country," says study leader Alene Kennedy-Hendricks, PhD, an assistant scientist in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Bloomberg School. "It's not c...