Approximately 31 percent of adults who use opioid painkillers and live with children store the prescription medications safely, according to a new study published in the journal Pediatrics.
For the study, researchers analyzed data from a nationally representative survey of more than 5,000 adults. Among those surveyed, 681 adults who used opioid pain medications in the past year and had children ages 17 and younger living in the household were identified.
Safe storage was reported at a rate of 32.6 percent in households with children six years or younger. For households with children between the ages of seven and 17, the rate of safe storage was just 11.7 percent. Safe storage was defined as having the medications stored in a locked or latched place in homes with younger children and in a locked place for homes with older children.
"Unfortunately, the current child-resistant packaging that was transformative in reducing medication poisoning in young children will not keep older children and teens safe," said Andrea Gielen, the study's senior author and director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Injury Research and Policy in Baltimore. "We need new packaging, such as tamper-resistant, personalized pill dispensers, to make it easier for parents to keep these potentially dangerous medications inaccessible to older children. In the meantime, parents should keep their medications locked away and dispose of any leftover pills promptly and safely."
Overdose fatalities nearly doubled among those 17 years of age and younger between 1999 and 2015, according to a release. Only 13 percent of respondents reported worrying about their children accessing the opioid medications.
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