Greetings from Iowa, Many of you probably read in the ASHP Newslinks about a teenager in Iowa that died from an accidental, self-administered dose of methadone. He took the medication from a family member's medicine cabinet and shared it with his friends. Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident. We are seeing this happen all over the country. One of the most common methods of obtaining prescription drugs is taking them from a family member or someone else. There was a post last month about the CDC's Vital Signs publication describing the "epidemic" of prescription pain killer overdoses in the U.S. (www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns). This news highlights the importance of counselling patients about safely storing medications, particularly analgesics and controlled substances. I thought I would share a few resources that I use and recommend for educating patients on safe medication storage and disposal. General guidelines for poison prevention can be found at: http://www.cdc.gov/homeandrecreationalsafety/poisoning/preventiontips.htm See also, those sites directed at analgesics www.emergingsolutionsinpain.com – patient education tool kit with fact sheet on safe medication storage www.opioids911.org (disclaimer - I'm a reviewer for this website) http://www.painfoundation.org/painsafe http://www.painfoundation.org/painsafe/education-awareness/pain-and-travel/travel-guide.pdf The federal government has a Drug Take Back Day every 6 months. The next one is April 28th, 2012. Check out http://www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov/drug_disposal/takeback/ Many states have a Take Back program as well. Here's the link to Iowa's Take Away program. Check out http://iarx.org/takeaway/ The FDA has a fact sheet about disposing of unused medications. This site has a flier that can be downloaded for patients. Check out http://www.fda.gov/ForConsumers/ConsumerUpdates/ucm101653.htm#GuidelinesforDrugDisposal Thanks Lee