• Medications in the Home: Safe Storage and Disposal
• Dangers to Young Children
• Dangers to Teenagers
• Drug Disposal Resources

Medications in the Home:   Safe Storage & Disposal

Medications in the home pose a danger of misuse and accidental poisoning. They must be stored safely and securely. Unused or expired medications must be properly discarded.

It is not only prescription drugs that need to be stored securely and disposed of when unused or expired. Non-prescription medicines left unguarded pose serious harm to small children who ingest them without appreciation of the risk and to others who would intentionally misuse them. Researchers saw a 34% rise in reports of suicide attempts involving over-the-counter (OTC) painkillers acetaminophen (Tylenol© and others), ibuprofen (Advil© and others) and acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin) between 2000 and 2018.[1]  During this period, 549,807 calls to poison control centers involving intentional attempts at self-harm mentioned OTC painkillers.[2]  Nearly half of the calls involved young people between the ages of 6 and 19 years.[3]

Unfortunately, too many New Jerseyans find medications unguarded in their home or the homes of relatives, friends, or neighbors. Please do your part to reduce accidental poisonings and overdoses by engaging in safe storage and disposal practices. For more information, including a video about safe drug disposal, click here.

Dangers to Young Children

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that each year, “[a]pproximately 150,000 children (17 years old or younger) visit emergency departments because of adverse drug events.”[4]  This includes 35,000 children under 5 years old who are brought to the emergency room (ER) because they ingested medicines that were left within their reach.[5]  And in nearly 70% of those ER visits, the victims are only 1 or 2 years old.[6]

Up and Away, the national education program for families on safe medication storage, offers the following tips for keeping your toddlers and young children safe from accidental drug ingestion:

• Store medicines in a safe location that is too high for young children to reach or see, even between doses.

• Never leave medicines, vitamins, or supplements out on a kitchen counter or at a sick child’s bedside, even if you have to give the medicine again in a few hours.

• Always relock the safety cap on a medicine bottle. If it has a locking cap that turns, twist it until you hear the “click” or until you can’t twist anymore.

• Tell children what medicine is and why you must be the one to give it to them.

• Never tell children medicine is candy in an attempt to convince them to take it, even if your child doesn’t like to take medicine.

• Remind babysitters, houseguests, and visitors to keep purses, bags, or coats that have medicines in them up and away and out of sight when they’re in your home.

• Discard unused and expired medications. For a list of medicine drop boxes in your county, click here.

• Keep the NJ Poison Center’s help number – (800) 222-1222 – programmed into all of your phones. You can call that number 24/7 and speak with a live health expert.  For more information about the NJ Poison Center, click here.

To find this information and more on Up and Away, including brochures, posters, and other helpful tools, click here. 

 For more safety tips from the CDC, e.g., how to give medicine safely to young children, click here.

For a guide entitled, “Playbook for Parents of Pre-Teens: Protecting your Pre-Teen’s Well-Being and Heading Off Problems,” click here.

Dangers to Teenagers

The teenage years are often a time of self-exploration, experimentation, and boundary testing.[7]  Because the areas of the brain that are responsible for judgment, decision-making, emotion, and impulse control are not fully developed until early adulthood, adolescents may be more likely than adults to take unhealthy risks, including experimenting with addictive substances.[8]   In other words, the desire to experience something new or exciting – while not fully appreciating the risks – is a normal part of teen development.[9]

It doesn’t help that at the time when adolescents are highly susceptible to social influences, they are exposed to a steady stream of societal messages (from friends, family, advertising, and the entertainment media) promoting and glamorizing substance use[10] and rule-breaking.

One way for parents to effectively counter these neurological and societal influences is by being vigilant about proper medicine storage and disposal. According to the Partnership for Drug-Free Kids, two-thirds of teens who have misused pain relievers said they got them from family and friends, including from their home medicine cabinet.[11]  Storing medications safely and disposing of old drugs reduces easy access.

And it is not only the present dangers that must be considered.  Research indicates that “[t]hose who had a prescription opioid in their cabinet during adolescence were over two and a half times as likely to later develop opioid dependence.”[12]

Of course, when it comes to teenagers, parents must do more than simply keep medications up and away, and out of sight. The U.S. Drug and Enforcement Administration (DEA) offers additional suggestions for keeping teenage children safe from prescription and non-prescription drugs. Those suggestions include locking up and counting medications, and educating adolescents about the dangers of misusing controlled substances, that is, medications that can cause physical and/or mental dependence, e.g., opioids, ADHD medications, anti-anxiety medications, and sleep medications.[13]  For this information and more from the DEA, click here.

If you have opioids in your house, you should have the reversal medication naloxone, too. And you and your family members should understand how to use naloxone. For more information about naloxone, click here.

For tips from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) about how to talk to your teenage children about medication misuse, and additional parental strategies to prevent substance abuse, click here.

Drug Disposal Resources

Unused medicine, particularly when not safely and securely stored, poses a very real risk to children, pets, and adults.[14]  But expired medicine poses a risk too.

If your medicine has expired, discard it. Expired medicines can experience a change in strength or chemical composition.[15]  Certain expired medications are at-risk of bacterial growth and sub-potent antibiotics can fail to treat infections, leading to more serious illnesses and antibiotic resistance.[16]

Medicine “take back” options are the best way to safely dispose of unused or expired prescription and non-prescription medicines.[17]  All of your medicines dropped off at the take back locations will be destroyed.[18]

Before disposing of prescription medicines, be sure to remove all personal information on pill bottle labels and medicine packaging.

You can safely dispose of your unused or expired medications anonymously, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, in medicine drop boxes located across New Jersey. “Project Medicine Drop,” an initiative developed by the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs, provides secure drop boxes in police stations throughout the state. Each box is located indoors. Members of the public may dispose of their unused medications anonymously throughout the year. The boxes accept pills, capsules, patches, inhalers, and pet medications. However, syringes and liquids are not accepted. For a list of medicine drop boxes in your county, click here.

Some pharmacies accept unused and expired medications for disposal, too.  To see if there is a participating pharmacy near you, click here.

The DEA periodically holds a National Take Back Day, where temporary drug disposal sites are set up across New Jersey.   To search for a participating location and time near you, click here.

Do not flush expired or unwanted prescription and OTC drugs down the toilet or drain unless the label or accompanying patient information specifically instructs you to do so.[19]

[1]          See Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, “Is There Danger Lurking in Your Medicine Cabinet?” Dec. 1, 2020 (https://www.chop.edu/news/health-tip/is-there-danger-lurking-in-your-medicine-cabinet).
[2]           See id.
[3]           See id.
[4]           See Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  “Adverse Drug Events in Children.”  Medication Safety       Program. (https://www.cdc.gov/medicationsafety/parents_childrenadversedrugevents.html
[5]           See id.
[6]           See id.
[7]           See Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), “Why Do Teens Use Drugs.”  Mar. 31, 2023. (https://www.getsmartaboutdrugs.gov/family/why-do-teens-use-drugs).
[8]           See Partnership to End Addition. “Adolescent Substance Use.”  May 2020.  (https://drugfree.org/article/adolescent-substance-use/).
[9]           See DEA, “Why Do Teens Use Drugs,” supra.
[10]         See Partnership. “Adolescent Substance Use,” supra.
[11]         See Norton Healthcare. “Lock Away Your Medications and Take Rest to a Disposal Site.” Apr. 27, 2018 (https://nortonhealthcare.com/news/medicine-cabinet-teenager-drug-supply/).
[12]          See Elliott, A., Liu, Y., et al., “Exposure to medicines in the family medicine cabinet: is it a harbinger of later opioid dependence?” Subst. Use Misuse Sept. 15, 2021 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8442636/#:~:text=Those%20who%20had%20a%20prescription,prescription%20opioids%20in%20the%20home).
[13]          See id.
[14]          See P. Wu, MD & D. Juurlink, MD PhD. “Unused Prescription Drugs Should Not be Treated Like Leftovers.” Canadian Med. Assoc. Journal. Aug. 5, 2014. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4119135/).
[15]          See U.S. Food & Drug Administration, “Don’t Be Tempted to Use Expired Medicines.”  (https://www.fda.gov/drugs/special-features/dont-be-tempted-use-expired-medicines).
[16]          See id.
[17]          See U.S. Food & Drug Administration, “Disposal of Unused Medicines:  What You Should Know.” (https://www.fda.gov/drugs/safe-disposal-medicines/disposal-unused-medicines-what-you-should-know).
[18]          Seeid.
[19]          See U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “How to Dispose of Medicines Properly.” (https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2015-06/documents/how-to-dispose-medicines.pdf).