Tobacco Sales to Pharmacies Need Restriction
Published on November 13, 2009 7:44 AM
Cheap online tobacco in our shop
In many states was prohibited the cigarettes sales to pharmacies. For example San Francisco is the first city which banned the sale of cigarettes and other tobacco products at drugstores.
Now San Francisco manager Stuart Skorman, founder of the now defunct integral-oriented drugstore chain Elephant Pharmacy, wants to make pharmacies the only places that sell smoking products.
Skorman, who launched an uncommercial organization called HealthyPharmacies.org to promote his idea, believes that limiting cigarette sales to pharmacies would not only control the distribution and visibility of the product, but also give pharmacists the chance to advice clients about quitting.
This new idea would also prevent kids from going down to the corner store to buy cigarettes from a clerk who may not check identification, Skorman added.
"Keeping tobacco away from 12-year-olds saves lives and billions of dollars from the health care system," he explained. Skorman tested the concept in some cities and then comparing the influence on smoking with those that have prohibited the sale of tobacco products in drugstores.
"If limiting distribution and limiting the visibility of this dangerous product reduces smoking in communities, we believe pharmacists would be more than happy to be part of the program," he said.
But unfortunately most pharmacists and health experts interviewed for this story found the idea definite unhealthy. Dr. Stanton Glantz, a professor of medicine and director of UCSF's Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education, said: "It says pharmacists, who are supposed to be in business selling health products, should be selling disease products." Glantz said Skorman's suggestion posed an essential dispute of interest not only with pharmacists and health practitioners selling an unhealthy product, but also with those employees trying to talk to their customers out of buying products that are very beneficial for the business.
Marin County pharmacist Fred Mayer, of the Pharmacy Council on Tobacco Dependence, called Skorman's idea "terrible" and said pharmacists shouldn't be peddling products that hurt people. San Francisco, which started enforcing its groundbreaking ordinance on Oct. 1, 2008, is still fighting legal challenges to the ban.
