Save a life: get rid of unused drugs
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Editor,
This is a letter about from the heart to your readers about the Third DEA National Take Back Initiative, Saturday, Oct. 29, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. both at Tribal Law and Order in Pablo and in the Community Center in St Ignatius.
Per the DEA, these Take Back days address a major U.S. public health and public safety issue, described by the Executive Office of the U.S. President in a June 2011 report, “Epidemic: Responding to America’s Prescription Drug Crisis.” The response includes: education of healthcare providers and dispensers, and patients, parents and public; tracking and monitoring; proper medication disposal; and enforcement.
Per the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 2,500 U.S. teens per year use prescription drugs to get high for the first time, the majority of these drugs coming from those prescribed to family and friends, and from the home medicine cabinet. Twenty-seven thousand Americans die from prescription drugs each year. And more than a half million under 5 years old in the U.S. landed in emergency rooms from 2001 to 2008 due to self ingestion of medicines, over half of these being prescription drugs, with the greatest impact coming from pain pills such as morphine, Lortab and oxycodone.
My plea from the heart is both for these under-5s and also from close experience with several hundreds of Montanans who had become deeply addicted to opioids and for years were unable to escape through any or all personal efforts of their own nor any form of therapy. It all began with exposure to a prescription pain pill, obviously originally prescribed by someone to someone for medical use. All these people knew from the very first pill that they “liked” the pill. People who can take a pain pill and get pain relief but no unexpected mental or physical sensation may or may not ever become addicted. But you never know who will “like them” — a liking that will not let them go without having another. The course then is insidious: going from liking to wanting to needing; and “I never saw it coming;” the agony known only to those with hooks deep into them; cursing the day they ever took that one first pill; and the hopelessness.
My plea from the heart is that you never let unused pills of yours do this to a friend, or loved one, or even a stranger. Please come to the Initiative, this Saturday, Oct. 29, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., at Pablo Law and Order or Mission Community Center, and let loose of those unused pills in favor of the safety of a young one you love. Thanks,
Ken Cairns, MD
Polson
