Company pushing lawmakers to make 'timer caps' mandatory on all prescription pill bottles

WASHINGTON - Prescription drug abuse is a major problem nationwide, but one man is on a mission to make digital timers on the caps of all prescription pill bottles mandatory.

"My mom was addicted to opioids for as long as I remember," said Larry Twersky, the CEO of TimerCap. "This is one of the biggest crisis and I hope we have the ability to make simple decisions and simple choices that can affect the population dramatically."

Preventing prescription drug abuse is personal for Twersky. He is in Washington D.C. talking to lawmakers and pharmacists about tightening laws on pill bottle packaging to help curb abuse.

"The timer cap resets every single time you open it so you can see if somebody has been in your meds," Twersky said. "Prevention packaging has not been something that they have been talking about and now it is. So between the groups that we met with from the task force with the FDA to the CDC to the NIH, it's now being discussed."

On March 1, 2016, 17-year-old Centreville High School student Alexia Springer was found dead in her home after she reportedly attended a party and took a dangerous cocktail of drugs that included morphine and oxycodone. Her 18-year-old classmate David Evers was sentenced to seven years in prison for giving her the pills.

"I just hope that people realize that this can happen and these drugs are so toxic," said Springer's mother, Rona Powell.

Twersky hopes lawmakers will make the caps required packaging on all prescription pill bottles amid increased headlines highlighting the aftermath and dangers from abuse -- and the families left behind.

The special caps are also targeting senior citizens to help them remember when they last took their medications.

Federal lawmakers are apparently open to discussing possible changes to prescription drug packaging, which has been the same since the 1970s.