This morning, Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway stood on the White House lawn to gloat on Fox & Friends how Americans have already turned in 990,000 pounds of prescription pills.
The pills were turned in as part of National Prescription Drug Take Back Day, which is officially this Saturday.
The Drug Take Back program was initially started in 2010 by the DEA to help Americans properly dispose of unused and “expired” prescription pills.
In reality, the Drug Enforcement Administration was simply attempting to curtail the number of prescription pills entering the Black Market.
While the initiative is fine for Americans that are concerned that little Johnny is going to get into their pill stash, for others, who are responsible enough to keep track of their medication, it’s a complete sham.
With the exception of nitroglycerin, insulin and liquid antibiotics, 90% of drugs are both safe and still effective even after 15 years past their expiration date.
But don’t take my word for it, take a look at the study conducted by the U.S. Military that was faced with the dilemma of throwing out millions of dollars worth of stockpiled medication passed its expiration date.
Expiration dates themselves are meaningless and are stamped on bottles only because, in 1979, Congress passed a law that required it – at the request of drug manufacturers.
And of course, if drugs expire (even Tylenol and Aspirin now have meaningless expiration dates), the average consumer will chuck a bottle and head to the pharmacy for a new bottle, driving up industry profits.
With the cost of prescription drugs averaging around $90 per prescription, drug company executives were salivating as they watched Kellyanne this morning announcing that nearly a million pounds of pills were handed over to the government.
With a single prescription weighing about 2 ounces, that’s 7.9 million prescriptions or $713 million dollars of drugs that will likely be refilled.
The White House could have saved Americans nearly a billion dollars while taking care of the missing pill problem by shooting out this link on Amazon and offering a tax credit to anyone who purchases a medicine lock box.
But then again, President Trump hates Amazon.
As with much of what government does, the National Prescription Drug Take Back Day is just another scam that harms the American people while benefiting some toothy lobbyist sitting in the Willard Intercontinental sipping a dry martini.
So do the right thing and save your unused pills – or as Harvard recommends, store them in your refrigerator for them to last even longer – and one day, you or a family member or neighbor will likely need them again.
And by that time, the blister pack of the drug Vertex, that now runs $24,350 for a month’s supply – 18 times the price of gold – may be even more valuable.
