Efforts to reinstate a prescription drug take-back program in Clallam County are in a holding pattern.
The pilot program could make a landing, however, when Sequim City Attorney Craig Ritchie speaks with federal officials in a conference call later this week.
Ritchie is lobbying on behalf of Clallam County Sheriff Bill Benedict, who organized the drug take-back program with Jim’s Pharmacy in Port Angeles and Frick Rexall Drug Store in Sequim last month.
The program was set up to keep unwanted or unused prescriptions drugs out of medicine cabinets, off the streets and out of the groundwater.
Benedict deputized qualified pharmacists who passed a background check at the two stores and set up padlocked steel boxes, like mail boxes, for people to drop off their unwanted pills.
The pharmaceutical drugs, including highly-addictive narcotic painkillers, were to be taken to the Environmental Protection Agency-approved incinerator in Spokane where law enforcement officials destroy the drugs they seize on the street.
“I think it’s a good idea,” Ritchie said Tuesday.
But the program never got off the ground.
DEA stepped in
The Seattle office of the Drug Enforcement Administration stepped in and halted the program earlier this month.
Controlled prescription drugs defined as schedule 2 though 5 in the Controlled Substances Act could not be dropped off at the pharmacies, the DEA office said.
Ritchie said the DEA may reconsider. He’s been in contact with federal attorneys in Washington, D.C., who seem to support the pilot program.
“This is something the DEA in Washington, D.C., is in favor of,” Ritchie said. “They seem to be in favor of it. We are in favor of it.”
State Attorney General Rob McKenna told the Clallam County Meth Action Team on Monday that prescription drug abuse is a serious and growing problem across the state.
He said accidental overdoses from narcotic pills account for more deaths than all other illegal drugs, including methamphetamine, combined.
Ritchie, who is also the acting Sequim city manager, said the DEA will likely reach a decision by week’s end.
Meanwhile, Ritchie has been seeking support from state leaders who are also pharmacists, including Sen. Linda Evans-Parlette, R-Wenatchee.
“When this gets really rolling, this is going to go out in our utility newsletter and all sorts of things so people know how to do it,” he said.
Keep drugs out of water
Ritchie said coroners often find large quantities of highly potent anti-cancer medication and narcotic painkillers after someone dies. If flushed down a toilet, these pills can seep from septic tanks and sewers into the water table.
“We don’t want it to go down our sewer,” Ritchie said.
Clallam County Commissioner Mike Chapman said Benedict’s drug take-back program “could lead to a very robust program throughout the state and the nation.”
Chapman co-convenes the Clallam County Meth Action Team with Benedict.
“It is a pilot project, and we just got the attorney general’s blessing,” Chapman said. “We talked about that. They support the program.”
Chapman gave a short report of McKenna’s 75-minute appearance at the meth action team meeting during the regular commissioners’ meeting on Tuesday.
Chapman said the recent DEA decision contradicts the Environmental Protection Agency and leaves citizens who aren’t using their full prescriptions without options.
“They [the pills] are ending up on the streets,” Chapman said.
“We want a safe place for people to return them.”
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Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-417-3537 or at rob.ollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.