{"id":318179,"date":"2010-02-12T18:49:59","date_gmt":"2010-02-12T23:49:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/seattletimes.nwsource.com\/html\/northwestvoices\/2011060078_drugdangers.html?syndication=rss"},"modified":"2010-02-12T18:49:59","modified_gmt":"2010-02-12T23:49:59","slug":"drug-dangers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/318179","title":{"rendered":"Drug dangers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Limit child and elderly exposure to unwanted drugs<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In addition to the obvious environmental consequences from throwing medicines in the trash or flushing them [\u201cEven if you\u2019re careful, drugs can end up in water,\u201d Business, Feb. 7], equally compelling reasons to safely dispose of medicines include: reducing access to medicines in our homes that are available for teen abuse and minimizing the potential for accidental overdose by children and the elderly.<\/p>\n<p>Three years ago, Group Health set up secure medicine return drop-off boxes at its clinics across Washington state and Snohomish County law-enforcement officers set up drop-off boxes last December. In three years, more than 30,000 pounds of medicines have been safely disposed. But limited voluntary measures can\u2019t address our statewide problem.<\/p>\n<p>Legislation in Olympia would require pharmaceutical manufacturers to pay for a statewide medicine-return program like they do in Canada and some European countries.<\/p>\n<p>The pharmaceutical industry\u2019s solution \u2014 throwing unwanted medicines in the garbage \u2014 is the cheapest thing to do, but at what cost? A statewide medicine-return program would cost a fraction of a penny per container of medicine sold in Washington state. It\u2019s time pharmaceutical manufacturers take responsibility for taking back unwanted medicines in Washington state.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u2014 Patric L. Slack, commander, Snohomish Regional Drug Task Force, Everett<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Limit child and elderly exposure to unwanted drugs In addition to the obvious environmental consequences from throwing medicines in the trash or flushing them [\u201cEven if you\u2019re careful, drugs can end up in water,\u201d Business, Feb. 7], equally compelling reasons to safely dispose of medicines include: reducing access to medicines in our homes that are [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2861,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-318179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2861"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318179\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}