Should You Throw Expired Medicine?

Expired Medicine

So I was rummaging through an old bag that was kept into the uncharted depths of my closet. There were a few things that I found which surprised me (as I remember very well that I had discarded them). In this wasteland of banished objects, I found some pills laying around. So just as a normal human would do if he/she found some old medicine, I checked for the expiration date. The date was of 2018. So the medicines expired sometime in 2018. But what does that mean? The pills looked fine to me. And when exactly did the pills expire? I had to dig deeper. I also dug deeper into the bag and found some old photos of me, but that’s a matter for another article.

What does the Expiration date on medicines mean?

We are familiar with checking the expiration date of any medicine that we buy. And this date is usually 2-3 years from the date of manufacture. So what happens if we take some aspirin that has crossed its expiration date? The answer to this, is quite complicated.

A law was passed in 1979 that mandated pharmaceutical companies to print an expiration date on the medicines they manufacture. The term expiration makes us relate it to the complete end of something. But expirations date actually mean something different.

The meaning of Expiration Dates.

Expiration date for medicine means that the medicine will be 100% potent till the exp. date written. After that time period, the medicine starts to lose its potency. Medicines are chemicals which can degrade over a period of time. So to make sure that you get the best treatment, it was mandated to put a time period in which the medicine will be 100% effective. So expiration dates should be called maximum potency period.

The Military Steps in.

If you thought that medicines are unusable (as the word expire implies) and disposed the unused medicines, don’t worry, you are not alone. The US Military were facing the same problem. The stockpile of medicine which expired was causing a loss of billions of dollars. And Uncle Sam does not like wasting any money. So in ’85, he calls up some people at the FDA and asks them to do a little test.

A Test for the Meds

The Shelf Life Extension Program (SLEP) was undertaken by the FDA for the Department of Defense. Since the pharmaceutical companies were hesitating to the test, the government wanted to know if the expiration dates that the companies slap on the pills mean anything or not. And they wanted to save some money. The test was conducted, results were received and people were shocked.

The test was done on 3000 lots of medicines, representing 122 different drugs. Almost 90% of those 122 drugs were effective, even 5.5 years after the expiration date printed on them. This was a shocking reveal. To add to it, only about 18% of the medicines failed in this test. So, should we just ignore the false date of potency and take the medicines? No. You should never do that. Here’s why.

The SLEP test.

Firstly, the test was conducted on only 122 drugs. And you must be aware of that there are way more than 100 drugs in the market today. So this survey cannot be taken as all conclusive. Secondly, this test was conducted in the 80s. That’s almost 40 years from now. With the recent advancement and introduction of new drugs, there needs to be a new study to figure out the prolonged shelf life of these drugs.

So expiration dates do have a very important purpose, right? Well yes and no. I know it sounds bizarre, but let me explain.

Why Expiration date is a necessary evil.

It may seem evil that the big Pharma companies are deliberately putting expiration dates so that the medicines could be discarded and their sales remain rejuvenated. And in many ways, it is exactly why they do it.

Even though the study did by the FDA was decades old and with a small sample size, but think about it. A good percentage (about 75% to 80%) of today’s medicine must have a shorter lifespan printed on it. On average, most medicines, both over-the-counter and prescription, have about one year more on the shelf life than printed. Are these companies blatantly scamming us? They have to.

Pharmaceutical companies don’t measure the exact potency period of their drugs. They just observe the maximum potency period and print the date. This allow them to offer a medicine that they can guarantee will work in that window of time. So you get the best working medicine.

Companies also cannot conduct expensive and time-consuming tests to determine the exact shelf life of the meds. That money would be used for research and development. 2-3 years of shelf life is great for most of the medicine. People change their phones in shorter timespan. But here is why the companies need you to keep buying new medicines.

Medicines are Expensive.

A new drug requires hundreds of millions of dollars if not billions to come into existence. Countless testings, research, etc pile the costs so high that it becomes necessary for the company to make a profit off of those. 
These companies cannot ask for $20 for 2 pills of aspirin. So they must make sure that you keep buying new medicines and the sales figure stay rising. This helps the company to develop new and better drugs which helps the entire community.

So maybe the drugs that you have in your cabinet will stay effective even after they have expired. But it is always safe (and advised by the FDA) NOT to use expired medicines. Some expired antibiotics and vaccines can cause serious damage to your body.

Now that I found what I was looking for about the expiration of medicine, I think I should get back to finding more bags that I haven’t seen in years. Maybe I’ll find more expired medicines. But this time, one question won’t pop into my mind.