# Drug Expiration Dates - Good Info For Preppers



## YuccaFlatsRanch

"DO MEDICATIONS REALLY EXPIRE?

Some reassuring and economical info!

By Richard Altschuler

Does the expiration date on a bottle of a medication mean anything? If a bottle of Tylenol, for example, says something like "Do not use after June 1998," and it is August 2002, should you take the Tylenol? Should you discard it? Can you get hurt if you take it? Will it simply have lost its potency and do you no good?

In other words, are drug manufacturers being honest with us when they put an expiration date on their medications, or is the practice of dating just another drug industry scam, to get us to buy new medications when the old ones that purportedly have "expired" are still perfectly good?

These are the pressing questions I investigated after my mother-in-law recently said to me, "It doesn't mean anything," when I pointed out that the Tylenol she was about to take had "expired" 4 years and a few months ago. I was a bit mocking in my pronouncement -- feeling superior that I had noticed the chemical corpse in her cabinet -- but she was equally adamant in her reply, and is generally very sage about medical issues.

So I gave her a glass of water with the purportedly "dead" drug, of which she took 2 capsules for a pain in the upper back. About a half hour later she reported the pain seemed to have eased up a bit. I said, "You could be having a placebo effect," not wanting to simply concede she was right about the drug, and also not actually knowing what I was talking about. I was just happy to hear that her pain had eased. 

Upon my return to NYC and high-speed connection, I immediately scoured the medical databases and general literature for the answer to my question about drug expiration labeling. And voila, no sooner than I could say "Screwed again by the pharmaceutical industry," I had my answer. Here are the simple facts: First, the expiration date, required by law in the United States, beginning in 1979, specifies only the date the manufacturer guarantees the full potency and safety of the drug -- it does not mean how long the drug is actually "good" or safe to use.

Second, medical authorities uniformly say it is safe to take drugs past their expiration date -- no matter how "expired" the drugs purportedly are. Except for possibly the rarest of exceptions, you won't get hurt and you certainly won't get killed. Studies show that expired drugs may lose some of their potency over time, from as little as 5% or less to 50% or more (though usually much less than the latter).. Even 10 years after the "expiration date," most drugs have a good deal of their original potency. 

One of the largest studies ever conducted that supports the above points about "expired drug" labeling was done by the US military 15 years ago, according to a feature story in the Wall Street Journal (March 29, 2000), reported by Laurie P. Cohen. The military was sitting on a $1 billion stockpile of drugs and facing the daunting process of destroying and replacing its supply every 2 to 3 years, so it began a testing program to see if it could extend the life of its inventory. The testing, conducted by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), ultimately covered more than 100 drugs, prescription and over-the-counter. The results showed that about 90% of them were safe and effective as far as 15 years past their original expiration date.

In light of these results, a former director of the testing program, Francis Flaherty, said he concluded that expiration dates put on by manufacturers typically have no bearing on whether a drug is usable for longer. Mr. Flaherty noted that a drug maker is required to prove only that a drug is still good on whatever expiration date the company chooses to set. The expiration date doesn't mean, or even suggest, that the drug will stop being effective after that, nor that it will become harmful. "Manufacturers put expiration dates on for marketing, rather than scientific, reasons," said Mr. Flaherty, a pharmacist at the FDA until his retirement in 1999. "It's not profitable for them to have products on a shelf for 10 years. They want turnover."

The FDA cautioned there isn't enough evidence from the program, which is weighted toward drugs used during combat, to conclude most drugs in consumers' medicine cabinets are potent beyond the expiration date. Joel Davis, however, a former FDA expiration-date compliance chief, said that with a handful of exceptions -- notably nitroglycerin, insulin, and some liquid antibiotics -- most drugs are probably as durable as those the agency has tested for the military. "Most drugs degrade very slowly," he said. "In all likelihood, you can take a product you have at home and keep it for many years." Consider aspirin. Bayer AG puts 2-year or 3-year dates on aspirin and says that it should be discarded after that. However, Chris Allen, a vice president at the Bayer unit that makes aspirin, said the dating is "pretty conservative"; when Bayer has tested 4-year-old aspirin, it remained 100% effective, he said. So why doesn't Bayer set a 4-year expiration date? Because the company often changes packaging, and it undertakes "continuous improvement programs," Mr. Allen said. Each change triggers a need for more expiration-date testing, and testing each time for a 4-year life would be impractical. Bayer has never tested aspirin beyond 4 years, Mr. Allen said. But Jens Carstensen has... Dr. Carstensen, professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin's pharmacy school, who wrote what is considered the main text on drug stability, said, "I did a study of different aspirins, and after 5 years, Bayer was still excellent. Aspirin, if made correctly, is very stable.

Okay, I concede. My mother-in-law was right, once again. And I was wrong, once again, and with a wiseacre attitude to boot. Sorry mom.

Now I think I'll take a swig of the 10-year dead package of Alka Seltzer in my medicine chest to ease the nausea I'm feeling from calculating how many billions of dollars the pharmaceutical industry bilks out of unknowing consumers every year who discard perfectly good drugs and buy new ones because they trust the industry's "expiration date labeling." 

Also read: From Harvard Med School 
Drug Expiration Dates Do They Mean Anything? The Family Health Guide


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## JMx4

Thanks for posting this. I was wondering about this the other day.


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## Ross

How you store medicines has more effect on them than how long they've been around. I (like and idiot) always seem to leave my injectable tetracycline in lighted areas so it goes off quicker than the expiry date. Vacine is also fragile. Things like lidocane etc are probably pretty stable for decades from what I've seen.


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## Jokarva

I still have some of my mom's meds and she died 10 yrs ago...I'll take pretty much anything as long as it hasn't developed an off color or smell. And I don't worry much about potency since there's such a wide variable on how different people absorb meds anyway...I figure it will do the job.


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## radiofish

I wonder what the true shelf life in decades is, for physician prescribed concentrated opiate based pain medications? The ones without a lot of extra ingredients, such as 'Dilaudid'.....

Than again I have gotten most of my doctors into prepping, or at least into getting their own CCW weapons and licenses over the last few years. They have no qualms on prescribing pretty much anything in moderation, since they know I dislike how those medications effect me - just think of 'Homer Simpson' staring at a wall, with his head tilted, drooling, and muttering "doughnuts"..


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## VT Chicklit

I use to work for a pharmaceutical manufacturer in their packaging department. We were always told the expiry date was a "conservative date" because they could not control the storage and handling conditions of the product once it left the warehouse. The date was based on testing and was a date where they knew the product would be effective. When stored properly or under optimum conditions the date where the product would loose efficacy was much later.


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## Aintlifegrand

So is there an universal best way to store most all meds? Cool/dark?


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## NJ Rich

My doctor told me the same thing with a few exceptions. Sorry but I don't remember what the particular drugs were but they were a high potency anti-biotics. I did ask about the specific drugs he had prescribed for we.

He said many drugs are re-package and sent to countries with less restrictive drug regulatuions.

I am not disposing of my older drugs I paid a lot of money for. :umno:


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## Txsteader

Couldn't have been a more timely topic. I just bought a couple packages of allergy meds that are on sale with an expiration date of July 2012. I was hesitant to buy too many because of the date, but think I'll go back and clean the shelf. 

Thanks for posting this!


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## ryanthomas

radiofish said:


> I wonder what the true shelf life in decades is, for physician prescribed concentrated opiate based pain medications? The ones without a lot of extra ingredients, such as 'Dilaudid'.....


Opiates last pretty close to forever as long as they're not exposed to high heat.



Aintlifegrand said:


> So is there an universal best way to store most all meds? Cool/dark?


Add dry and you've got a good rule of thumb. There may be some exceptions, but I can't think of any.


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## unregistered29228

I just got an order of asthma inhalers from All Day Chemist, and they emailed me to make sure it's ok that they "expire" in May 2012. I told them it was fine, since I've used inhalers long past their expiration date. As long as the propellant doesn't run out of steam the meds still work fine. 

I think I read someplace that one should smell expired aspirin. If it smells like vinegar it should be tossed, otherwise it's ok. And I can vouch for 15 year old lidocaine cream still being effective - I have some!


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## mnn2501

Thats great to learn. I tend to stockpile my long term meds so this will help.


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## fishhead

I think there may be a difference between dry pills and liquid medicines with the pills lasting much longer.


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## Harry Chickpea

Since it is illegal to offer prescription drugs to people, I'm wondering why someone has not set up a multinational (read outside the U.S.) place, where drugs can be donated by the relatives of those who have died. There are many extremely potent and costly drugs that now get flushed down toilets or tossed in garbage tips, when others are literally at death's door because they cannot afford those same drugs.


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## debbiekatiesmom

thank you so much for the info. last week i cleaned out our medicine cabinet but hated so much to throw the expired stuff out. i shoved it all in a sack and stashed it. good thing i kept it. i feel better now.


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## DryHeat

I keep long-term stored meds... antibiotics and chronic condition treatment supplies... sealed in FoodSaver vacuum bags in a secondary small dorm refrigerator. I'm not in a particular rush to vac-seal foil bubble-pac varieties from ADC, for example, but I'd think pills that otherwise are rattling around in a bottle from a local pharmacy or OTC would benefit a lot. I recall reading from my own net research on this point several years back that the antibiotic cipro was about the only thing really tested long term after that more general Pentagon study in the 80's. Best I recall, stored dry, dark, and at around 70F or a bit lower, it was 90% effective after 25 years worth of aging.


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## Guest

_*The FDA cautioned there isn't enough evidence* from the program, which is weighted toward drugs used during combat, to conclude most drugs in consumers' medicine cabinets are potent beyond the expiration date. Joel Davis, however, a former FDA expiration-date compliance chief, said that with *a handful of exceptions* -- notably nitroglycerin, insulin, and some liquid antibiotics -- most drugs are *probably* as durable as those the agency has tested for the military. "Most drugs degrade very slowly," he said. "*In all likelihood,* you can take a product you have at home and keep it for many years." 

Now I think I'll take a swig of the 10-year dead package of Alka Seltzer in my medicine chest to ease the nausea I'm feeling from calculating how many billions of dollars the pharmaceutical industry bilks out of unknowing consumers every year who discard perfectly good drugs and buy new ones because they trust the industry's "expiration date labeling." _

But if he were poisoned by something that really could not be stored for long periods of time or a product that he stored badly which caused it to degrade to something toxic I'm willing to bet he'd jump right up and scream "I'm gonna sue!"

Thus the reason the drug manufacturers use "conservative dates."



VT Chicklit said:


> I use to work for a pharmaceutical manufacturer in their packaging department. We were always told the expiry date was a "conservative date" because they could not control the storage and handling conditions of the product once it left the warehouse. The date was based on testing and was a date where they knew the product would be effective. When stored properly or under optimum conditions the date where the product would loose efficacy was much later.


What it really comes down to bottom line is how much uncertainty are you willing to accept in your medications?

I keep a number of over-the-counter drugs for years past their dates. Personal experience has shown me that they will have remained effective. But for these not very important nostrums I'm willing to accept a degree of uncertainty. If my aspirin doesn't quell my headache as well as a fresher one would have it's no big deal. If my sinus medication has grown weak then no great loss. MOST over the counter medications are not going to present any real danger if they lose potency and MOST will not degrade to anything harmful.

But we have people here who take potentially potent and often times life saving prescription medications. How much uncertainty are you willing to accept with these? When it can create serious problems by its failure to work as needed then I prefer to err on the side of a fresher product.

Optimum medication storage conditions are the same as optimum food storage conditions. Cool, dark, and dry.


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## Space Cowboy

I would be cautious of Tetracycline. I have read that it DOES degrade with toxic side effects. This antibiotic is very cheap, but I have tossed all my expired meds of this type. There are many other antibiotics that last much longer with no toxic side effects. Please research this drug before using!

SC


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## ryanthomas

A.T. Hagan said:


> But we have people here who take potentially potent and often times life saving prescription medications. How much uncertainty are you willing to accept with these? When it can create serious problems by its failure to work as needed then I prefer to err on the side of a fresher product.


Of course fresh is better than old stuff, but if it comes down to it, old is better than nothing in most cases where your body is accustomed to getting that drug on a regular basis. But I would actually recommend gradually getting off prescription medications as much as possible. Chemical dependency can cause all kinds of problems, especially if the chemicals become unavailable.



Space Cowboy said:


> I would be cautious of Tetracycline. I have read that it DOES degrade with toxic side effects. This antibiotic is very cheap, but I have tossed all my expired meds of this type. There are many other antibiotics that last much longer with no toxic side effects. Please research this drug before using!


Last I heard the manufacturers had fixed that particular problem, so anything being sold now shouldn't be dangerous even after expiration. But there really are better antibiotics for most infections.


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## unregistered29228

A.T. Hagan said:


> When it can create serious problems by its failure to work as needed then I prefer to err on the side of a fresher product.


That's a good point, and another reason to rotate food and meds. I keep our antibiotics for 2-3 years and then replace them. I might keep them longer after reading this thread, but they're relatively cheap to replace, and I want to make sure in a HTF situation that they're fully effective. Things like Pepto Bismol, Nyquil and Bactine last for YEARS - we lived overseas for a decade and kept lots of OTC meds for that whole time. They all worked fine when needed, and the only things I can think of that didn't stand up to years of storage was hair conditioner and body lotion. Those tended to separate and get a rancid smell.


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