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Doctors in Wales are being urged to prescribe only the necessary amount of drugs, after a patient returned unwanted medicines worth £2,000.
The NHS is hoping to save up to £50m through a new campaign aimed at cutting the amount of wasted medicines in Wales.
More than 250 tons of out of date and unwanted drugs are returned to pharmacies and surgeries every year which then have to be destroyed as they cannot be reused or recycled.
A new campaign launched by the NHS urges doctors to prescribe only the necessary amount of medicines while patients are to be told not to stockpile prescription medicines.
Doctors have received letters from the Chief Medical Officer for Wales, Dr Tony Jewell, and the NHS Chief Executive, Paul Williams, about the new campaign.
However the assembly government said it had not seen an increase in the number of drugs prescribed since prescription charges were removed in Wales three years ago.
Copyright Press Association 2010
