According to the white paper on the recovery of expired drugs in Chinese families, about 78.6% of families in China have small medicine boxes, but more than 80% of families do not have the habit of cleaning medicine boxes regularly. As a result, the country produces about 15000 tons of expired drugs a year People treat expired drugs casually, and some people still choose to take them; Someone threw it into the trash can; Others specially recycle expired drugs and put them on the market. The damage to personal health and ecological environment caused by these treatment methods can not be ignored. At present, the establishment of classified delivery points for expired drugs is only realized in a small number of prefectures and cities, and there are still insufficient recycling delivery points in most provinces and cities. Many cities in China have carried out family expired drug recycling activities, but the effect is not ideal due to the high recycling cost and no sustainable guarantee. Experts suggested establishing a long-term recovery mechanism for expired drugs, strengthening the publicity of the recovery of expired drugs, promoting the reform of drug packaging and reducing the production of expired drugs from the root. How to deal with the expired drugs stored at home? Should they be directly thrown into the garbage can or recycled by a special agency? Mr. Lu, a resident of Zhenjiang, Jiangsu Province, has been troubled by this problem recently. Not long ago, he was scalded while cooking at home. He remembered that there was scald ointment in the family medicine box, so he used it to smear the wound. After wiping, he inadvertently found that this scald cream had exceeded the shelf life for more than half a year. Fortunately, he didn't feel unwell afterwards. But this experience also made Mr. Lu pay attention to the treatment and recycling of expired drugs. In recent years, with the enhancement of public health awareness, more and more people, like Mr. Lu, are used to storing drugs at home. According to the white paper on the recovery of expired drugs in Chinese families, about 78.6% of families in China have small medicine boxes, but more than 80% of families do not have the habit of cleaning medicine boxes regularly. As a result, the country produces about 15000 tons of expired drugs a year. The reporter found that people treat expired drugs casually, and some people still choose to take them; Someone threw it into the trash can; Others specially recycle expired drugs and put them on the market. The damage to personal health and ecological environment caused by these treatment methods can not be ignored. The experts interviewed suggested establishing a long-term recovery mechanism for expired drugs, strengthening the publicity of the recovery of expired drugs, promoting the reform of drug packaging and reducing the production of expired drugs from the root. Expired drugs can be seen everywhere Improper handling will do great harm Lao Zhang, a resident of Fengtai, Beijing, is in his 70s. He suffers from a variety of chronic diseases such as hypertension and takes antihypertensive drugs every day. Therefore, his family bought many drugs for chronic diseases, such as Radix Isatidis and Jianwei Xiaoshi tablets. But he seldom cleans the small medicine box. When he cleans it at one time at the end of the year, he will always find that more than 10 kinds of drugs have expired, and some have even expired for more than two years. So did the Zhangchen family, Lao Zhang's son. Zhang Chen's family has two children. In addition to the drugs commonly used by adults, children also need drugs. Due to the long time of not cleaning up, there are not many expired drugs in the small medicine box. "Some drugs don't expire for a long time. Sometimes we adults take them directly, but if the drugs for children expire, they will be directly thrown into the dustbin." Zhang Chen said. Neither Lao Zhang nor Zhang Chen knows how to correctly handle these expired drugs. "'It's a drug with three poisons'. While drugs bring curative effect to people, if the usage and dosage are wrong, they may cause damage to the body." Wang Yue, a professor in the Department of medical ethics and law at the school of medical humanities of Peking University, said that the material composition of expired drugs has changed, which will not only reduce the efficacy, but also decompose harmful impurities, which may cause allergy and even shock after taking. Deng Liqiang, executive director of China Health Law Society and deputy director of Beijing Huawei law firm, said that expired drugs disposed at will will will pollute water and soil and affect human health under the long-term infiltration and diffusion of rainwater and groundwater. "Expired drugs will not only cause a waste of resources, once illegal vendors recycle such expired drugs and re flow to the market, the adverse consequences can be imagined." The reporter combed the public information and found that data showed that two-thirds of the expired drugs in the rural market were flowing out of all kinds of small family medicine boxes. Take care of the diabetes insurance system, and the joint insurance agency of Xiamen city in Fujian province has cracked over 8 cases of repeated fraud, cheating and drug selling in 8 cities, and seized thousands of medicines for treating hypertension, diabetes and hepatitis B. Lack of mechanism and insufficient publicity Residents' participation is not high According to the list of exempted management of hazardous wastes in the appendix of China's national list of hazardous wastes (2021 Edition), the waste drugs generated in the daily life of families or activities providing services for daily life belong to the hazardous wastes in the domestic garbage, and the hazardous wastes in the domestic garbage generated in the daily life of families that are not collected centrally are not managed as hazardous wastes. At present, many market supervision departments have carried out drug recycling, encouraging drug recycling by setting up recycling points in pharmacies, hospitals, communities and other places, and uniformly registering and collecting expired drugs. The recovered expired drugs shall be treated innocuously by a waste treatment enterprise with medical waste treatment qualification. However, the reporter recently randomly interviewed nearly 100 residents in Beijing, Tianjin, Anhui and other places and found that the drug recycling work is not satisfactory. Some people have never heard that expired drugs can be recycled, others do not know where the drug recycling point is, and more people choose to throw expired drugs and domestic garbage into the trash can for centralized treatment at the same time. On the official website of Tianjin market supervision and Administration Commission, the reporter found the latest information of designated pharmacies for recycling expired drugs in families in Tianjin released on September 9, 2020. According to the above information, the reporter came to a drugstore located on Jingjiang Road, Hedong District, Tianjin. At the door of the store, the reporter did not see any information related to drug recycling. After consultation, we learned that expired drugs can be recycled here, but the recycling box is placed in the bottom. The reporter noted that the recycling box of expired drugs was empty, and the notebook used to register and provide expired drug information and personnel was also brand-new. The staff explained that people usually find that the drugs are expired when they pick up the old things at the end of the year. At that time, there are more people coming to the drugstore. "We will organize special activities to publicize, and usually no one comes". According to the above list of designated pharmacies for the recovery of expired drugs, the reporter came to a pharmacy located in Chenyang Road, Hedong District, Tianjin, but was told that there was no recovery point for expired drugs. In the survey, many residents reported that they sometimes wanted to go to designated institutions for drug recycling, but they found "waste recycling" by searching "drug recycling" through map app; Even though the official website and official account have found the recovery point, it is too far away from the residence. "It's too much trouble to recover a few boxes of expired drugs and run to a few kilometers away." In addition, some enterprises have also participated in the recovery of expired drugs, but most of them do not have regular channels for the recovery of expired drugs, but only do some public welfare and phased recovery activities. Some enterprises are also difficult to sustain due to high processing costs. According to the analysis of many experts interviewed by the reporter, there are many reasons for the low degree of residents' participation in drug recycling. First, the publicity is not enough. The public does not know that expired drugs can be recycled. Even if they know that they can be recycled, they do not know where to recycle them; Second, there is a lack of systematic and perfect recovery mechanism, with high recovery cost and weak sustainability. "The drug administration law clearly prohibits expired drugs from entering the market, but there are no detailed provisions on how to recycle and dispose of expired drugs. Since 2019, Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Sichuan and other places have implemented waste classification policies. However, at present, the establishment of classified delivery points for expired drugs is only realized in a small number of cities, and there are still insufficient recycling delivery points in most provinces and cities. Many cities in China have carried out household expired drug recycling activities However, due to the high recovery cost and lack of sustainable guarantee, the effect is not ideal. " Deng Liqiang said. In addition, Deng Liqiang pointed out that the main responsible organization or department of recycling is not clear in many places, and the disposal cost of recycled expired drugs is high, which is also the reason for the difficulty of recycling expired drugs. Promote the reform of drug packaging Reduce waste from the source In order to promote the recovery of expired drugs in families, the government and enterprises are exploring and taking action. The Ministry of ecology and environment issued the code of conduct for citizens' ecological environment (for Trial Implementation), guided the public to release hazardous waste such as waste drugs according to the signs, and promoted the opening of facilities such as hazardous waste treatment and domestic waste treatment to the public. Weihai Municipal Market Supervision Bureau of Shandong Province revised the administrative measures for the recycling and destruction of household expired drugs in Weihai City, established and improved the long-term mechanism for the harmless disposal of household expired drugs, implemented dynamic management of designated recycling stores, regularly carried out normative inspection, and cancelled the qualification of household expired drugs recycling for stores that failed to meet the designated recycling standards, so as to ensure the safety and disposal of expired drugs. Ali health innovates the "rest assured on the code" drug Traceability Technology, so that users can identify expired drugs by scanning the Chinese drug electronic supervision code on the kit. From March 13 to March 31 every year, residents of Hefei, Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Dongguan, Zhengzhou and other cities can "one button call recycling brother" to collect expired drugs for free. Deng Liqiang believes that we should first let people form the habit of active recycling of expired drugs, and then establish supporting measures in processing, which is the development direction of promoting the recycling of expired drugs in the future. "At present, many parts of the country are actively adding recovery points for expired drugs and ineffective drugs. Some pilot cities can be selected among these cities that have been tested first and popularized throughout the country after summing up the good experience. Only by establishing a unified and long-term standardized recovery mechanism and standardizing people's behavior in dealing with family expired drugs, can we solve the problem of recovery of expired drugs, not only prevent residents' family expired drugs from re entering the market, but also prevent expired drugs from flowing into the market at will Discard and cause environmental pollution. " Deng Liqiang said. In the absence of a complete special recycling mechanism, how should expired drugs be properly handled? Industry experts introduced the following practices: the drugs of tablets, pills and capsules should be wrapped in paper first and then thrown into the trash can for disposal; Eye drops, topical potions, oral liquids and other liquid preparations should be poured into the sewer and washed away without mixing with each other; For ointment drugs, the ointment shall be extruded from the container, collected in a package and discarded after sealing; Spray drugs should be completely evacuated in outdoor and air circulation areas, avoiding exposure to open flames. Do not open the injection drugs of water and injection without authorization, and put them into the garbage can together with their complete outer packaging. In Wang Yue's view, in order to reduce the production of expired drugs from the root, drug packaging reform should be put on the agenda. "It is suggested to amend the relevant laws to stipulate that drugs can be sold in whole packages with restrictions. For example, in Japan, drugs are packed in a small paper bag; in the United States or some European countries, patients will get a small plastic bottle with only a small dose of drugs for a few days. Through the reform of drug packaging, the problem of over packaging in medical institutions and drug trading enterprises can be changed, and