It’s important to keep track of all the medicine in your home, especially if you have children or teens. This includes all medicines prescribed by your physician or dentist. Even over the counter medications such as aspirin, tylenol or cold and cough medication can cause serious illness or death if taken improperly.
Overdose By Accident
Don’t leave children alone with any kind of medicine; prescribed or over the counter. Children often mistake medicine as candy or juice, especially if it’s colorful or sweet. More than 60,000 children go to the hospital every year because they took a medicine unsupervised. Tell your dentist and other doctors you see about all the medicines you take and also inform your child’s dentist or doctors of all the medicines they take. Do not mix medicines. If you are currently taking medicine, ask your doctor or pharmacist before adding another. Some medicines contain the same active ingredient. As a result, you can overdose if you take more than one medicine with the identical active ingredient.
Drug Abuse
People can abuse both prescription or over the counter medicine to get high. In 2010, high school seniors abused medicine more than any other substance except marijuana. In a 2011 survey, almost one teen out of five said they had abused prescription medicines at least once. More than one in ten teens said they had abused over the counter cough or cold medicine. It’s a common myth that abusing prescribed drugs is safer than street drugs.
Keeping Your Home Safer
Here are some actions you can take to make your home safer:
– Store medicine in a place where children can’t access it.
– Put medicine away in a safe place every time you use it. Never leave medicine readily accessible such as on a kitchen counter or at a sick child’s bedside even if you have to use it again soon.
– Listen for the click to make sure a safety cap is locked.
-Never tell children medicine is candy to convince them to take it.
– Tell guests about safety. Ask friends and family to keep anything they may have with them that contains medicine away and out of sight while visiting.
– Be prepared in case of an emergency. Place the poison control telephone number (1-800-222-1222) in your home and cell phone speed dials.
Here are a few ways to keep medicine from being abused:
– Don’t keep medicine on hand “just in case” you might need it later. Get rid of medicine you have finished using. Ask your doctor or pharmacist how to dispose of medicine you no longer need. Don’t flush it down the toilet as this introduces the drug into lakes, rivers, oceans and the water supply.
Mixing the medicine with cat litter, coffee grounds, cayenne pepper before disposing of it is safer.
– Always keep track of how much medicine should be in each bottle.
– Do not share medicine. Do not take anything a doctor prescribed for someone else. Don’t let anyone else take your medicine.
– Keep all medicine in the container it came in. This makes it easier for you to identify what you are taking or giving to your child.
