Secure and Responsible Drug Disposal Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I rise to thank and congratulate my colleagues for passing the Secure and Responsible Drug Disposal Act by unanimous consent. I am proud to have worked closely with Senator Klobuchar to draft and introduce the bill, and I thank her and her chief counsel, Paige Herwig, for their ideas and advocacy of commonsense drug disposal solutions.

The Secure and Responsible Drug Disposal Act will make a cost-free change to the Controlled Substances Act to permit State and private entities to accept unused controlled substances through drug take-back programs. As the Senate unanimously recognized, the Secure and Responsible Drug Disposal Act is necessary because up to 17 percent of prescribed medication goes unused every year.

State, local, and private entities already have established drug take-back programs to keep some of this unwanted medication away from children and drug abusers. But the Federal Controlled Substances Act, CSA, currently prevents these drug take-back programs from accepting the most dangerous medications--controlled substances. The CSA particularly prohibits people prescribed controlled substances from giving them to any person or entity without express permission from the Drug Enforcement Administration. As a result, individual consumers and long-term care facilities now either stockpile unwanted controlled substances or dispose of them in improper ways, such as flushing them into the water supply. This can lead to drug diversion or water pollution.

Diverted prescription drugs contributed to a 114-percent increase in overdose deaths involving prescription opioids between 2001 and 2005, and the number of treatment admissions for prescription opioids increased 74 percent from 2002 to 2006. Troublingly, over one-third of new prescription drug abusers are teenagers, who now abuse prescription drugs more than any controlled substance except marijuana.

This bill will fix the problems of unwanted prescription drug stockpiling and improper disposal by amending the CSA to allow the Attorney General to draft regulations permitting authorized entities to accept and dispose of controlled substances. These regulations will enable state, local, and private entities to operate drug take-back programs for all prescription drugs in a safe and effective manner consistent with diversion controls.

In discussing how the bill will allow drug take-back programs to accept unwanted controlled substances, I want to highlight certain provisions we added to the bill after collaborating with House colleagues and their staff. First, in authorizing new drug disposal regulations, the bill makes clear that ``the Attorney General shall take into consideration the public health and safety, as well as the ease and cost of program implementation and participation by various communities.'' Representative JAY INSLEE, who has been a strong advocate for drug disposal programs, suggested this important provision. It ensures that the planned drug disposal regulations will give States and private entities wide latitude to design the most effective take-back programs for their communities. This includes considering the differences between rural and urban communities.

Second, the bill notes that the Attorney General's regulations ``may not require any entity to establish or operate a delivery or disposal program.'' Representative JOE BARTON, along with other members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, proposed this language to clarify that no State, town, or business will have to run a drug take-back program unless they want to do so. This provision is a welcomed change from the type of unfunded mandates we so often see in Federal laws.

Third, the bill allows long-term care facilities to dispose of their residents' medications, and it permits ``any person lawfully entitled to dispose of [a] decedent's property'' to deliver the decedent's unused medication for disposal. These common-sense provisions were advanced by Representatives BART STUPAK, HENRY WAXMAN, LAMAR SMITH, and other House members. They address the specific concerns of long-term care facilities and the practical worries of anyone who loses a loved one.

These collected provisions, along with the bill's ``no cost'' estimate from the Congressional Budget Office, are among the many reasons the bill enjoys the support of 41 State attorneys general, the Department of Justice, and the National Association of Chain Drug Stores. They also prove that this bill is bicameral in its design, as well as bipartisan.

By passing this bill, we have taken a major step toward getting unwanted prescription drugs out of medicine cabinets and off our streets. We have given State, local, and private groups more authority to serve their communities, and we have done so in a cost-free manner.

I believe the Secure and Responsible Drug Disposal Act exemplifies the type of bipartisan legislation Congress should look to pass. I thank my colleagues again for supporting it unanimously, and I look forward to it becoming law.

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