Came across some good info that has been checked out as coming from reliable sources and here is the just of it - don't toss out those meds in pill form, they last many, many years!

"The key from the article is "shelf life is about marketing, turnover and profits. I find it absolutely incredible that the military spent from 1993 through 1998 about $3.9 million on testing and saved $263.4 million on drug expense.

We can clearly gain some valuable insights from this incredible piece in the Wall Street journal and sent in by ever diligent Michael Belkin.

Unless you have nitroglycerin, insulin and liquid antibiotics, you can pretty much be safely assured that your medication expires years beyond the date it says it does. I believe the major tragedy is that many Third World countries needlessly discard the drugs that are sent to them and could actually be saving lives due to lack of appreciation of this concept."

- Dr. Mercola  ( http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2000/04/02/drug-... )

----------Here is the articles backing it up----------
shelf life extension program (SLEP)
The Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Vol. 95, No. 7, July 2006
from page - http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jps.v95:7/issuetoc
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jps.20636/pdf
full article in HTML - http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jps.20636/full