§ 2201. FINDINGS.

(a) Legal medicinal drugs allow us to live longer, healthier, and more productive lives.

(b) A Mayo Clinic study issued in June 2013 found that nearly 70 percent of Americans take one prescription drug, up from 48 percent in 2007-2008. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, health care providers in the United States wrote 259 million prescriptions for painkillers in 2012, enough for every American adult to have a bottle of pills.

(c) Municipal wastewater treatment plants are not designed to treat complex drug compounds that end up in the sewer system after being flushed down toilets and sinks. As a result, drugs can pass through wastewater treatment systems and contaminate receiving waters.

(d) An Environmental Protection Agency report on drinking water released in December 2013 tested effluent samples from 50 large wastewater treatment plants for active pharmaceutical ingredients and metabolites. Out of the 63 total compounds tested for, 43 were detected in at least one of the samples and all samples were found to contain at least one pharmaceutical compound. The presence of pharmaceuticals in surface water are well documented to have ecological impacts, including negative effects to fish and other aquatic life. Properly disposing of leftover, expired, and unwanted drugs would reduce the quantity of pharmaceutical compounds that are discharged into the San Francisco Bay and other receiving waters.

(e) Providing proper disposal options for leftover, expired, and unwanted drugs is also important in preventing unintentional poisoning deaths attributable to drugs, by making such drugs less accessible to persons who might abuse them. Deaths from drug overdose have been rising steadily over the past two decades. Every day in the United States, 113 people die as a result of drug overdose, and another 6,748 are treated in emergency departments for the misuse or abuse of drugs. Nearly 9 out of 10 poisoning deaths are caused by drugs. In 2011, 80 percent of the 41,340 drug overdose deaths in the United States were unintentional.

(f) Proper drug disposal could also impact the number of people who become addicted to prescription drugs. Results from the 2013 National Survey on Drug Use and Health indicate that about 15.3 million people aged 12 or older used prescription drugs non-medically in the past year, and 6. 5 million did so in the past month. Seventy percent of those addicted to prescription drugs say they first accessed drugs by taking them from friends and family who kept them unlocked in the house.

(g) San Francisco has adopted a goal of achieving Zero Waste to landfill by the year 2020. To meet this goal, it is expected that all discarded materials will need to be sorted or processed to maximize recovery of valuable resources. Additional and separate disposal options for medicines are needed to protect the health and safety of refuse sortline workers and to ensure the maximum recovery from San Francisco's waste stream.

(h) Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), also called Product Stewardship, is a strategy that places some responsibility for end-of-life management of consumer products on the manufacturers of the products, while encouraging product design that minimizes negative impacts on human health and the environment at every stage of the product's lifecycle.

(i) San Francisco passed Producer Responsibility Resolutions in 2006 (Resolution No. 154-10) and in 2010 (Resolution No. 94-06) to state its support for managing product waste under an EPR system. Many other local and national government bodies support EPR including CalRecycle (formerly the California Integrated Waste Management Board), the National Association of Counties, and the National League of Cities.

(j) California has passed four significant product stewardship laws for mercury thermostats (AB 2347, enacted as Chapter 572 of the statutes of 2008), carpet (AB 2398, enacted as Chapter 681 of the statutes of 2010), paint (AB 1343, enacted as Chapter 420 of the statutes of 2010), and mattresses (SB 254, enacted as Chapter 21 of the statutes of 2013). All four laws require producers to establish and fund product stewardship programs for their waste stream.

(k) California Senate Bill 966, enacted as Chapter 542 of the Statutes of 2007, required CalRecycle to survey existing drug collection programs, evaluate them for several factors including cost effectiveness, and make recommendations for implementation of statewide programs.

(l) In 2010, Congress passed the "Secure and Responsible Drug Disposal Act of 2010," Public Law No. 111-273, which authorized the Attorney General to increase the methods – formerly restricted to law enforcement – by which controlled substances may be collected including collection at pharmacies. The goal of the bill was to increase opportunities for drug collection in order to reduce the instances of substance abuse, accidental poisoning, and release of harmful substances into the environment. On October 9, 2014, the Drug Enforcement Agency promulgated regulations implementing the bill, 21 C.F.R. Parts 1300, 1301, 1304, 1305, 1307, and 1317. These regulations, among other things, authorize retail pharmacies to maintain secure collection bins for controlled substances.

(m) A number of Canadian provinces and other countries already have active, well-established drug product stewardship programs in place. British Columbia has had a manufacturer-funded drug collection program in place since 1996. Ontario began a program in July 2010. And Manitoba began its program in April 2011. France, Spain and Portugal, among other countries, have national, well-established collection programs for home-generated drugs, which are paid for by drug companies and operated by Product Stewardship Associations on their behalf

(n) In 2012, Alameda County became the first local government in the United States to pass legislation, Ordinance No. 0-2012-27, requiring pharmaceutical companies to design, fund, and operate a safe drug collection and management program which could operate like the take-back programs found in Canada's pharmacies. On September 30, 2014, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal rejected a legal challenge to Alameda County's ordinance brought by drug manufacturers. Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America v. County of Alameda, 13-16833, 2014 WL 4814407 (9th Cir. Sept. 30, 2014).

(o) On June 20, 2013, the King County Board of Health passed Rule and Regulation No. #13-03 which created a drug take-back system for King County residents. The King County take-back system is also funded and operated by drug companies.

(p) To date, there is no voluntary or mandatory statewide product stewardship program for unwanted drugs in California. In 2013, the California State Senate passed a bill, SB 1014, that would have required drug companies to fund and operate a Product Stewardship program to collect and properly dispose of home-generated pharmaceutical waste, but the California Assembly did not take up the bill for a vote.

(q) There is considerable demand in San Francisco for a permanent drug stewardship program. Since 2012, the San Francisco Department of the Environment has operated a pilot program for the collection of controlled and non-controlled substances. As of January l, 2015, the program consists of 12 retail pharmacies and one community center collecting non-controlled substances and all 10 of the City's police stations collecting both controlled and non-controlled substances. The pilot program collects an average of 1,429 pounds of controlled and non-controlled substances per month, and as of December 31, 2014, has collected over 46,749 pounds.

(r) The pilot program, with only 23 drop-off locations, does not offer adequate convenient disposal options for all City residents. Moreover, only 45 percent of the pilot program's cost is covered by industry funding, and that funding is not reliable or sustainable.

(Added by Ord. , File No. 141095, App. 3/26/2015, Eff. 4/25/2015)