Quick reminder now that the weekend is in view: Saturday is the twice-yearly Drug Take-Back Day, and you’re invited once again to take unneeded/expired medication to the Southwest Precinct (2300 SW Webster) to get rid of it, 10 am-2 pm. Keeping it around could be a danger to someone in your household and/or a target for burglars. Last time around, SPD says, dropoffs at its precincts including this one totaled half a ton!
FWIW, last time we went into the precinct, they would not accept liquid medications (we had albuterol). However, the pharmacy in QFC on Alaska does has a drop box available for all medications.
The SPD Blotter item linked in our blurb makes that clear – which is interesting considering that the question was asked at two recent meetings at the precinct and the answer was that they WOULD take liquids as long as they were securely packaged … but apparently that was not true. – TR
A couple of years ago I asked my doctor to write a new prescription for an expensive medication I take every couple of years. I had plenty on hand from previous prescriptions but they’d all expired. He told me to save myself the money and go ahead and take the expired pills, that they’d be fine. And this guy graduated from the Einstein School of Medicine in NYC, one of the best medical schools in the country?He then went on to explain that most chemicals used in drugs are highly stable, and that many retain their original potency for years after they expire. But that the FDA requires pharmaceutical companies to update the literature and warnings that come with every prescription and non-prescription drug at regular intervals, which I believe he said was six months. And so the expiration date has nothing to do with whether a drug is still effective or not, but is designed to alert the public to any new dangers it might pose, which apparently is quite rare with most medications that have been around for a while. No doubt the pharma companies love the expiration laws. Aspirin, for example, can last a decade or longer. You can look it up. And you should, of course, do further research and/or talk to your doctor before taking this as anything more than one comment from one guy who, for all you know, could think the earth is flat and that CIA is talking to him through a filling in his mouth.
Not sure what happened with the paragraph breaks and line spacing in the above post – looks like a guy who talks to Sasquatch wrote it. But this blog does so many things right that it’s hard to complain.I wonder if there’s an organization that collects unused and/or expired meds for low income people, with all the proper oversight, of course? As everyone knows, some drugs are very expensive. I know they do it with eyeglasses. It seems like a waste to destroy them all.
Hi – not seeing paragraph breaks or any other formatting weirdness – and I checked in the desktop view as well as the admin view. Anyone else seeing weirdness in Mitch’s comment, please send us a screengrab (westseattleblog@gmail.com) – we restored the comment editing function today and I hope fixing one thing didn’t break another. (And a side pitch, if you ever spot anything malfunctioning on WSB, please don’t assume we know, for exactly this reason – there are so many combinations of browsers, operating systems, ISPs that a problem can erupt somewhere completely unknown to and unseen by us until someone points it out … thank you! TR)
I think he is likely referring to the lack of separated paragraphs. I have noted this in the past too as attempts to break up long passages into smaller paragraphs are posted without the breaks and look like one loooong paragraph. I would prevent this from happening by placing a single “.” on a line before starting the next paragraph. Like this:
.
That was the only way to break it up. I have not encountered this recently (of course I haven’t posted much either), but it appears to be what happened to Mitch. I’m guessing he tried to break up his post into several smaller paragraphs.
If you cannot make this, there are drop boxes at some Walgreens and also the Poly Clinic down on Madison.
A year or so ago, when there was a Southwest Precinct Station medication drop-off day, I stopped by on the advertised day with some unused and expired opioid pain medication from when I’d had a broken bone. The officer on duty was smirking and sarcastic and gave me a hard time, acting like he didn’t want to deal with it. He told me twice that there are other places closer by where I can drop it off (closer by to what, I don’t know – he had no way of knowing I live only a mile from the Precinct Station). I did end up leaving the medication with him, but will never take medication to that location again. Are there other options?
Anyone have leads on where I could take old albuterol? The pharmacist I talked with the last time around at the junction qfc said they don’t take albuterol in their box.
Sorry, comment time is over.
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