Drug Firms Told To Make Their Bottles Easier To Open Child-Resistant Drug Packaging Too Difficult For Senior Citizens

The government told medicine companies Thursday to quit making their bottles so hard to open. It will be a boon to struggling senior citizens, regulators said, and actually safer for the children the caps were designed to protect.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission voted unanimously to require that future child-resistant tops be made so that adults will have an easier, less frustrating time getting them off.

The change will be the first in child-resistant packaging in more than 20 years, said Ann Brown, chairman of the three-person commission. The benefit for children? It seems that many people who had trouble with the caps on medicines and other potentially hazardous substances just left them off altogether - even with kids in the house.

“Today is a great day for America’s children,” she said.

Brown said studies show that existing packages pose problems for older adults, many of whom can’t muster the strength needed to open them. Most of the tops must be pushed down and turned, or arrows on the cap and bottle must be aligned and pushed to get the top off.

But because the new caps will be easier to use, adults should have less reason to leave them off or transfer the contents to less secure packaging that endangers children, Brown said.

Officials also cited increases in the number of grandparents caring for children and statistics showing that one-fifth of all child poisonings happen at a grandparent’s house as strong evidence for ordering the change.

The new tops will rely less on strength and more on cognitive skills, which Brown said most children under age 5 don’t have. Consumers should begin seeing the modified caps in stores as soon as 12 months from now, she said.

A group of manufacturers, packagers and drug companies had opposed the proposal because, they said, it would make it easier for curious children to get into the packages, too.

Under the Poison Prevention Packaging Act of 1970, the commission tests child-resistant packages with two panels: one of children under age 5 and another of adults aged 18 to 45. Now the adult panel will be made up of people between 50 and 70.

The commission had intended to use 60- to 75-yearolds, but agreed to use the 50-to-70 group as a concession to industry.

CPSC officials say packages that pass both panels will prove to be easier for seniors to open and still protect children from unintended poisonings.

Deaths of young children have declined from about 450 a year to about 50 since the law was enacted, Brown said. But hospital emergency rooms still treat about 140,000 youngsters for poison-related accidents annually, she noted.