PROVO, Utah — If you walk into the Utah County Health Department building, you’ll now notice a big blue metal receptacle in the lobby.
“Unused medication is a health risk to anyone that's around it, so family or friends, other people that are in the home, children, there's a risk of being poisoned,” said Bonnie Hargreaves, Opioid Misuse Prevention Health Educator. “This is something that can be offered year-round.”
In recent years, the Drug Enforcement Agency has fought the opioid epidemic with "Take Back Days," when people can bring unused prescription medications to a collection site to eventually be properly destroyed. However, these events only happen twice a year.
There’s a brand new product that could take more drugs off the streets, and it’s made right here in Utah. The counter at the Health Department building has a funnel where people can come and dump pills, powders or liquids down, into a solution called NarcX.
“Once you add the drugs to the product, it starts working immediately, and it's been validated and tested to work on very harmful drugs like illicit fentanyl, cocaine, heroin, meth, as well as oxycontin and other drugs like that,”said Jordan Erskine, Chief Innovation Officer and Co-founder.
NarcX is the first, and only, DEA-approved solution that instantly renders drugs non-retrievable. It’s also biodegradable, reducing harm to the environment, said David Schilller, CEO.
“Traditionally, methods that were used that nurses and doctors and in pharmacies and practitioners thought were okay that weren't, were simple things like sewage, which is pouring it down the toilet, pouring it down the sink, you know, mixing it with kitty litter, coffee grinds, and not one of those methods meets DEA standard of non-retrievability,” he said.
Hospitals and law enforcement agencies are forced to stockpile the drugs they confiscate, waiting for them to be collected and burned, said Schiller.
“They were going into these big trash bags in these vials, and then when they were being taken for incineration, which is a six to 18-month process, it was being stolen from or diverted from, and so that medication was no longer reaching its the incineration point, which was leading to these massive stockpiles, you know, killing people,” he said.
After developing the product and patenting it, NarcX is very new to the market. There are only a couple of receptacles in Utah right now, and a few police departments are keeping bottles of the solution on hand. Soon, the company hopes to bring NarcX to the rest of Utah, the country and maybe the world, to ‘be a part of the solution’ to the opioid epidemic around the globe.
