Not in My Pharmacy: Smoking

This post is the first in a new sub-series for me. As I become more immersed, and more comfortable, in the profession of pharmacy I find myself developing opinions about the way things are and the way they ought to be. There are plenty of things wrong with the profession. Some of them are necessary evils (the complexity of insurance billing); others are absolute monstrosities (the inhuman profit motive driving retail pharmacy chains). What I'm going to do with the "Not in My Pharmacy" series is lay out things that I won't allow to happen in my pharmacy when I'm a pharmacist.

The first issue I'm tackling is tobacco sales. Now, I understand that the tobacco industry is a historical artifact built on centuries of tradition, and that it provides jobs to thousands of Americans and fuels our economy on a basic level. I'm not trying to go to war with the Big Tobacco (at least not yet). What I'm taking a stand on is the sale of cigarettes and other carcinogenic tobacco products in pharmacies. A pharmacy is a source of health care. It's where you go to get well. It's pure hypocrisy for such a place to sell a known carcinogen with little or no medical benefit. In many countries, it's now illegal for pharmacies to sell cigarettes. But if you go into your local Walgreen's (or Rite Aid, or a supermarket, or Wal-Mart - I'm not trying to fight a particular chain here; they're all bad on this), you'll find that while you have to walk all the way to the back to get your prescription medications you can buy cigarettes right up front. I don't understand this. Retail pharmacists have enough trouble being taken seriously as health care professionals. Why do we sell something that causes so many health problems?

My pledge today is this: No one will buy cigarettes in my pharmacy. To the extent that I have the ability to make that decision, cigarettes will be as inaccessible as possible. My preference is to work in one of the few retail pharmacies that don't sell tobacco, but that limits me to Target, independent pharmacies, and Kaiser. (PLEASE tell me of other options if you know of them.) I'm not going to limit my job search to this handful of companies. That isn't financially feasible at this time. What I will do is ensure that wherever I work, customers are not able to buy cigarettes at the dispensary counter. I'll use whatever power I have to make cigarettes harder to get in other areas of the drug store as well. Whenever and wherever I can set policy, I will make it as smoker-unfriendly as I can. And if you work in my pharmacy, you don't get a smoke break. Too many workplaces give special break schedules to smokers. Everybody gets the same breaks as mandated by law and company policy. You can smoke on those breaks, if you want to, but you have to be out of sight of the entrance, and you don't get extra time to do it.

Smokers, please don't misunderstand me. If you want to kill yourselves, please go ahead. I used to be a smoker; I understand that it's an addiction and it's really hard to quit. But I want you to buy your cigarettes at the gas station, or at a tobacco store, not at my pharmacy. And I want you to quit, too. I want to help you do that if I can. I don't think less of you because you smoke. The tobacco industry is very good at getting people to buy their product, despite the fact that it is lethal to their customers, and despite the overwhelming medical evidence against smoking. I'm going to do my part to make sure that my pharmacy is a place for health, not cancer. I'll sell you the patch, or the gum, or the lozenges, or prescriptions to help you quit. I just won't be the guy that helps you keep smoking.