Would you just open up your wallet and dump some cash into a drop box for no good reason?
Me neither.
But if you toss meds because they’ve passed the expiration date, that’s just what you’re doing. And more suckers are doing it — a USA Today report says drop boxes for expired meds are doing boffo business.
A single box in Layton, Utah received 738 pounds of meds in 2009. For all I know, that stuff is getting repackaged and resold — after all, most of it’s still good.
There are plenty of reasons to toss your meds — including the fact that most of them are unnecessary in the first place. But don’t throw them out just because of the expiration dates.
One FDA study on the U.S. military’s drug stockpile found that 90 percent of more than 100 meds were fine well beyond those dates. Not just days, weeks or months later…but YEARS later.
That means those dates aren’t there to help you…they’re there to make you toss your aspirin every few years and buy a new bottle. But don’t bother — one study on aspirin found it to be perfectly fine after five years.
Keep all your meds in a cool, dry and dark place — not the bathroom — and most of them should be fine. Obviously, don’t use any meds that smell bad or look funny. And when you do throw them away, don’t flush them — our water is already bad enough.
No expiration date on me,
William Campbell Douglass II, M.D.