No. In most cases, kiosks are available 24/7. National Take Back Day is about bringing awareness to the need of disposing medications properly.
Across our state and in most of our communities, there are locations where community members can safely dispose of unused or unwanted prescription drugs. Piedmont is encouraging employees as well as the community to clean out their medication cabinets and dispose of these unnecessary medications – safely and anonymously.
National Take Back Day is a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) designated day to help educate and promote safe, convenient and effective methods for disposing of prescription drugs as well as the dangers associated with drug abuse.
Help providers adhere to safe prescribing guidelines.Prevent diversion in our workplaces.Equip patients with education when prescribed opioids.Help connect addicted patients to treatment resources.Partner with other community resources in in local initiatives to combat opioid addiction.Educate our communities on and facilitate the safe disposal of prescription medications.Treat addiction as a medical condition and work to reduce [...]
As a response to the opioid epidemic in the U.S., Piedmont Healthcare President and CEO Kevin Brown in June convened a task force to review how our health system should address this damaging public health crisis.
It is estimated that one-third of patients have a predisposition to become addicted to opioids, a fact that was ignored when opioids first came on the scene and has been highly underestimated even in the past 10 years.
According to the CDC, about 130 Americans die every day from an opioid overdose. There were 47,600 deaths in 2017 in the U.S. involving opioids, which is up 6x from 1999. In 2016, 929 in Georgians died.Source: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/67/wr/mm675152e1.htm)
For more than two decades, the addictive nature of opioids has been underestimated. This has led to overprescribing and a general lack of awareness of the harmful consequences of excess availability. What began as an epidemic with prescription opioids has spread to include an increase in deaths from heroin and synthetic opioids.
