At the beginning of October, Stamps and the GTPD began a prescription drug disposal service where students can safely throw away prescription drugs.
This initiative was started to prevent misuse of drugs on-campus or in the Atlanta community.
Illegal use of stimulant drugs on campus is recognized as a common issue that stressed students engage in. This drug disposal service is offered to tackle this issue and a secure manner.
“We certainly know that there is an abuse of prescription drugs in terms of stimulants, whether this will change it, I don’t know, but certainly, undisposed drugs on campus could find their way into circulation.
Some of these drugs have included Ritalin and Adderall,” said Dr. Gregory Moore, Senior Director of Stamps Health Services.
In the past, similar programs have been established under the GTPD and separate organizations at Tech, but the faculty at Stamps and the GTPD decided to hold drug disposal bins at the health center due to the consistent rate of traffic in the building.
Once the bins are full or ready for disposing, GTPD takes the drugs and dispose of them in a safe location.
In the past, drugs have been disposed of in inappropriate ways, so the disposal services serves as an alternative to other harmful drug disposal methods.
“There are a couple of problems with drugs that are out of date or no longer needed,” said Moore. “The common way in the past was flushing them down the toilet, but unfortunately drugs then get into the water supply and harm the environment and people who drink from the water supply. The second problem is that they can move into illegal circles of distribution within the community.”
Because most drugs on the black market come from medical cabinets within people’s houses, Stamps wishes that the service would prevent drugs from the Tech campus from entering the circulation.
“We hope that they use it,” said Moore. “Most college-aged students are generally healthy and do not have a lot of medicine around but we do find that illegal use and circulation can happen, even with antibiotics.”
The Stamps faculty understands that students often need specific drugs to treat their individual health concerns. They do maintain, though, that used drug prescriptions should be disposed of safely.