AIBU to throw away unopened prescription medicine?

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I am helping clear an elderly person's flat. There is a lot of unopened precription medicine. It is in date but the person has died. I offered to take it to the pharmacy to dispose of it, but my friend (who is Greek) says that in her country they send medicines to Africa and we should try to find a charity to give it to. I know it's valuable to someone, but have no idea where to start. Does anyone take medicine? There's bags full of it.

Please just take it to a pharmacy

Right, pharmacy it is. Thank you.

We have just had to do the same with my grandmothers medications… although only a months worth… our pharmacy needed all tablets in packets but out of boxes… any loose tablets from dosset boxes in a small food bag. Any controlled medications (morphine, pregabalin… there are more you can Google what is ‘controlled’) need to be out of boxes but in packets and in a separate bag to everything else… the pharmacy will then accept them. Cardboard boxes and paper bags dispose of at home. Hope this is of help…

Pharmacies are unable to reuse or redistribute any medication that has left the premises.

our pharmacy needed all tablets in packets but out of boxes

Ours just took them as they were, we just handed them over.
I felt so awful at the waste but the lovely lady just said thank you for bringing them in. She made a difficult task much easier.

My 77 year old mum only orders what she needs (because I do it online)
They just dispense the lot
I've given up complaining

intercare.org.uk/donate-supplies/general-public/

I've just found this on google. No idea how legit it is but looks like the kind of thing you are talking about

Forget this - I've just spotted they don't take medication no longer required. Seems such a waste when counties are in need.

So, you'd give your kid the sealed package medicine that had been given out to a stranger and returned to the pharmacy?
You'd be 100% confident they hadn't been tampered with?

Fewer people would be tempted to take a random bunch of unidentified pills than would be to take a sealed pack of opioids, for example

Must be your day for really stupid comments.

Take it to the pharmacy. That's what I did with my mum's. It served a few purposes - the medicines were disposed of safely, she was friends with them and she would have wanted me to tell them personally, they were very kind to me that I had lost my mum.

I know you were not close to this person but maybe the local pharmacist was a friend.

Ignore your nutty friend. People do all sorts especially when it comes to giving things to "starving people in Africa" or others they think will be grateful for their largesse.

I work in a pharmacy, and medication that is brought back to us has to be 'dooped' (disposal of old pharmaceuticals) and can not be reused (tampering issues etc..) it's amazing how much people bring back in! Someone tried to bring in 3 bin liners full of medication but we could only take one as we just didn't have the room or doop bins to dispose of it, there were 30+ boxes of unused paracetamol (prescription pack so 100 tables in the box) 10+ unused ventolin inhalers, just lots of waste!
Please people! If you don't need it! don't re-order it!

I had to clear a relatives house recently. There was a huge amount of prescribed medication hoarded, expired etc (in the end it turned out to be a supermarket trolleys worth, 3 binbags). I called the nearest Tesco and they said I could bring it in. Once there they asked me to remove the named labels from each of the separate packaging boxes for GDPR reasons. Took me about 45 minutes but they were very good and took them. I was raging about the waste but would never have just binned them or sent them anywhere else to be honest.
For the rest of the house I got a firm in to clear it - it wasn’t a hoarders house at all (aside from the medication!), all pretty clean and tidy and didn’t take long for it to be stripped. Sad though.

Pharmacy's can only dispense what is on the prescription, so this is an issue that you need to take up with her gp, please don't complain to the pharmacy as it isn't there fault that the gp issues her full prescription. The pharmacy wouldn't know what she doesn't want as they can only follow what has been sent by the gp.

You can just reject anything she doesn’t need when collecting it from the pharmacy, because it’s not left the pharmacy it will just be put back on the shelves. If it’s delivered just hand it back to the driver.

I really get irritated by the comments about sending medications "to Africa" etc. Most countries don't accept donated medicines- most have sophisticated import rules etc. Medicines may have different formulations for different climates, or different packaging so are unusable in the receipient country.
What happens is that the charity finds the medicines they have collected can't be donated and then have to dispose of them. I am a retired pharmacist and was asked to dispose of these stockpiles several times. It takes ages to take them out of the packaging and store them until collection time.

Sell them on the streets and donate the profit. 😂

The other problem we used to find was that people didn't want to take the medicine for some reason; but were convinced that the GP would "find out" if they didn't get it dispensed. So they'd take it home and just store it.

Daisymay2 · Today 18:24

I really get irritated by the comments about sending medications "to Africa" etc. Most countries don't accept donated medicines- most have sophisticated import rules etc. Medicines may have different formulations for different climates, or different packaging so are unusable in the receipient country.

100% agree - ah, Africa, the massive monolith, always grateful to act as a dustbin for whatever other countries don't want any more. They don't have any standards, y'see, so they're grateful for whatever old stuff they get given. Not good enough for us? Plenty good enough for 'Africa'!

It's not always the patient's fault though. Sometimes they tick all the boxes on your repeat prescription request form whether you've asked for them or not, particularly our pharmacy, attached to the surgery, owned by the GP partners.

Also my OH can't get items he never uses removed from his monthly Chemotherapy drugs - none of that is within his control - it's issued automatically and he gets the "full suite" whether he uses them or not, i.e. he's now got 3 years' worth of anti sickness and anti diarrhoea drugs he's never needed as they are automatically issued. He's also got a drawer full of very expensive chemo tablets (one kind is over £100 per tablet, the other several hundred pounds per tablet) - they issue 3 of the expensive ones but he only has 2 per month, and 21 of the less expensive and he only has 10/11 per month. His oncologist knows he's not taking the full amount, but tells him she's powerless to reduce the issue as it's a "package" and it's "too hard" apparently to change the prescription as any changes apparently need authorising by "the committee" whoever/whatever that is.

Anything good? I'll take some.

It is absolutely ridiculous and immoral how many millions of pounds worth of meds are destroyed in the uk ! Absolutely eye watering! Great for the greedy drug companies though !
Our local Ukraine charity do accept unopened medications and it is categorised and goes to Ukraine .

You'd give your kids medicine that you know had been issued to a stranger, and then returned? You'd be 100% confident they hadn't been tampered with?

When my parents died I cleared out first my mum's stuff - there was a whole table-full. I was so horrified that I took a photo. My dad agreed how bad it was & then when he died there was enough of one of his meds for 4 years. How on earth did that happen?! And he took what he was supposed to. Such a waste.

And, yes the pharmacy took the bin bags full. They would never be reused - how could they know what conditions they were kept under, for exams. When my dad went into a care home they wouldn't even take the meds he had.