Healthcare Matters

Recently, I watched my wife throw out what seemed like several hundred dollars worth of over the counter (OTC) and prescription drugs. I wasn’t happy. She insisted that she had been negligent not throwing out these same drugs sooner (i.e. a nice mix of allergy medications, anti-inflammatories, antibiotics and aspirin). She even threw out a Z-pack a doctor friend of mine gave to me. “For goodness sake, it was three years old, she said.”

It turns out that the expiration date on a drug does stand for something, but probably not what most of us think it does. Since 1979, drug manufacturers have been required to stamp an expiration date on their products –a stamp that guarantees potency and safety –based on what?

Most of what we know is a result of numerous studies conducted by the FDA at the request of the military. It makes sense. The military is forced to maintain significant drug inventories for all kinds of obvious reasons. And for financial reasons, it was even more interested in knowing whether the stockpiles it found itself sitting on genuinely needed to be replaced every few years.

The answer? 90% of the most critical drugs it had in stock, both prescription and OTC, were just fine. In fact, based on age testing, the same percentage was deemed potent through 15 years.

OK. Not that I’m cynical, but is the expiration date nothing more than one more marketing ploy by the drug companies?  Perhaps. But it’s probably more reasonable to give the drug companies a pass and recognize that they’re under the gun to be as conservative as possible. Even more,  if consumers operated with an attitude that drugs lasted a lifetime, then the market opportunities for newer and improved medications would be seriously encumbered.

What’s my bottom line: My wife probably shouldn’t have thrown out most of those drugs. And while many of you may not agree with that conclusion, at least give me this: she shouldn’t have thrown out the Z-pack, because we both know that I’m going to need it.

—Tom Finn