LEBANON — Alice Peck Day Memorial Hospital opened a medication take-back program this spring.
The green disposal box, located inside APD’s main entrance, allows anyone to dispose of leftover or expired medications. Most prescription and over-the-counter medications are accepted — items such as inhalers, needles and illegal drugs are not.
Accessible 24/7, community members can drop off medications with no questions asked, according to a news release issued last week by Dartmouth Health, the Lebanon-based system to which APD belongs.
“Unused medications left in the home can pose a serious risk, especially to children, teens, and even adults,” Carson M. Wenz, a clinical pharmacist at APD, said in the release. “This new drop-off site offers a safe and simple solution for removing those risks and reducing the chance of drug misuse.”
Nearly 45% of those who misuse prescription pain relievers obtained them from a friend or relative, according to the 2022 National Survey on Drug Use and Health.
The disposal box also provides an alternative to flushing drugs, which can lead to trace amounts of drugs contaminating community water supplies, Wenz said.
The disposal will be facilitated by Inmar, a North Carolina-based technology company that works in health care, who will “ensure that all collected drugs are managed according to the highest standards for security and environmental safety,” the release said.
Inmar ships box contents to a “destruction facility” in Texas, where they’re incinerated and disposed of according to DEA regulations, said Charley F., a hospital call representative for Inmar, said in a Tuesday phone interview. The representative said they weren’t allowed to provide their last name.
Other disposal boxes in the area include Dartmouth-Hitchcock’s pharmacy at Centerra and the CVS on Main Street in Hanover, in addition to most police departments in the Upper Valley.
The boxes are part of an effort to stem deaths due to drug overdoses.
There were 431 drug overdose deaths in New Hampshire in 2023, the most recent year for which complete data is available from the Office of Chief Medical Examiner. Vermont had 265 fatal overdoses in the same year, according to data from the Vermont Department of Health.
