Too often, unused prescription drugs find their way into the wrong hands. According to the 2017 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 6 million Americans misused controlled prescription drugs with a majority of abused prescription drugs being obtained from family and friends, often from the home medicine cabinet.
To provide consumers with a safe way to dispose of medication and help prevent misuse and abuse of prescription medication, the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy’s (NABP’s) developed the AWARxE® Prescription Drug Safety Program’s Drug Disposal Locator Tool. The tool currently has more than 7,000 disposal locations and new locations are added continuously. Independent pharmacies, retail pharmacies, and law enforcement agencies with disposal boxes are all included in AWARxE’s nationwide database. In addition, throughout 2018 and 2019 NABP has received locations disposal locations from chains including Meijer, CVS, and Walgreens to update the tool to include address and contact information for hundreds of pharmacies, law enforcement agencies, and other types of facilities where they had recently installed prescription drug disposal boxes.
The searchable database of disposal locations for prescription drugs can be found on the NABP website. Pharmacies or law enforcement agencies that offer permanent disposal sites may submit their locations for inclusion in the locator tool by downloading and emailing the form per the instructions on the site. Information about setting up permanent disposal boxes for pharmacies, long-term care facilities and law enforcement agencies can be found under Pharmacist Resources in the AWARxE Prescription Drug Safety section on the NABP website.