Selling (and profiting from) disease in the local pharmacy
By Dr. David Brown
July 16, 2008 | 03:46 PM Webster's dictionary defines a pharmacy as a place where medicines are compounded; a drug store; an apothecary's shop. All available definitions suggest that a pharmacy is an establishment that contributes to the public health by making or dispensing medicines. Pharmacies are distinct from convenience stores and, in fact, the retail pharmacies promote this distinction. One national pharmacy chain's website states: "We are focused on and committed to the health care needs of our customers." Although the realities of modern retailing have expanded the inventory of most pharmacies beyond medicines, no reasonable definition of a pharmacy is so broad as to include the sales of a poisonous product engineered to be addictive — cigarettes. Nevertheless a visit to three major pharmacy chains in the area have documented that each is engaged in the sale of cigarettes. According to the Centers for Disease Control, smoking harms nearly every organ of the body, causing many diseases and accounting for 438,000 deaths, or nearly one of every five deaths in the United States each year. Among the diseases caused by smoking are cancers of the bladder, mouth, throat, vocal cords, esophagus, cervix, kidney, lung, pancreas and stomach. In addition, smoking causes coronary heart disease, the leading cause of death in the United States, as well as stroke and aortic aneurysm. Smoking also causes 90 percent of the deaths from emphysema. It is difficult to understand how another national pharmacy chain can sell these disease-causing agents and at the same time claim in its vision statement that they "strive to improve the quality of human life" and that their mission "is to improve the lives of those we serve by making innovative and high-quality health and pharmacy services safe, affordable and easy to access." It is ethically and morally corrupt for institutions that claim their corporate mission is to improve the quality of human life to sell cigarettes. In addition, many of the legitimate medicines sold in pharmacies are to treat the very diseases caused by cigarette smoking. Thus, in an utterly reprehensive business model, not only are these pharmacies profiting from the initial sale of cigarettes but they profit a second time from the sale of medications to treat the diseases caused by cigarettes. A third round of profits is generated from the sale of medications designed to help smokers quit smoking. If improving the quality of life through smoking cessation is important to pharmacies (as it should be), they should make it easier on their customers to quit by limiting access to cigarettes by not selling them. Although the goal of all publicly traded companies is to maximize shareholder value, this should never be actualized at the expense of human health. To stop this practice our public officials should intervene. There is no reason cigarette sales cannot be prohibited or excessively taxed in pharmacies if the corporations themselves will not voluntarily cease sales. At the individual level, we should all complain to the corporate offices of the major pharmacy chains and boycott pharmacies that sell cigarettes whenever possible. Investors should consider avoiding investments in individual companies that promote disease for profit or the mutual funds that include such companies. Dr. David Brown is a Professor of Medicine at Stony Brook University Medical School and Chief of Cardiovascular Medicine at Stony Brook University Hospital. He is board certified in internal medicine with subspecialities in cardiovascular disease and interventional cardiology. Your Turn is an occasional column by The Village Times Herald readers.