Guard your medicine cabinet

Yet another study finds that young children are finding themselves in the emergency room after OD’ing on OTC medications. This investigation lead by the CDC, says that each year over 7,000 kids go to the ER each year due to side effects of cough and cold meds. Of these, 65% of these visits are due to unsupervised ingestions, which was the most common reason for the 2 through 5-year old category of ER visits. The researchers suggests that we should be looking at how medication packaging could be made safer–Okay, why not. More importantly, I suggest we look at how parents could be more vigilant! There is no reason a two-year old should be able to get at a bottle of medication, especially when they know that it will taste good because they tried it last time they had a cold.

It’s time for all parents to begin the practice of keeping medications safe from their young children. Before long those children will be teens. And they’ll be taking medications without their parent’s permission for different reasons–to get high or to sell them.