The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 277 No 7417 p308
9 September 2006

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· The Society
· Community pharmacy
· Control of entry
· Complementary medicine
· Controlled drugs
· Diabetes
· Pharmacy in the US

Letters to the Editor

Pharmacy in the US

Cigarettes on sale along with smoking cessation products

From Mr A. B. McCoig, MRPharmS

Roger Woodford’s letter (PJ, 26 August, p248) serves as a timely reminder that pharmacists engaged in smoking cessation should be continually updating the case for smoking cessation. The effects of tobacco smoking on skin are well documented and have even been the subject of a television commercial commissioned by the Department of Health. I have also tried, with varying degrees of success, to impress upon my clients the detrimental effects of smoking on appearance. Dr Woodford is right not to underestimate the task of persuasion or setting out the myriad of reasons for quitting. Adding yet more evidence-based incentives can strengthen the case although it is sometimes difficult finding the key messages from an increasing list that actually manages to cause changes in the lifestyle of each and every individual client.

My involvement in the enhanced service we provide in the UK was challenged briefly while on a trip to the US recently. In Massachusetts, it appears that every pharmacy sells cigarettes at point of sale. Large displays of major brands appear behind the counter where sales of other restricted sale items (such as pseudoephedrine tablets) are also made. Before we all gasp in incredulity at the complete abandonment of health care professionalism, it does not stop there. These tobacco products are actually price promoted or highlighted to the customer. Even more bizarrely, displays of nicotine replacement therapy products are placed alongside the cigarettes demonstrating some sort of twisted logic behind the marketing and merchandising of these two opposing categories. I immediately recalled the expression “bringing the profession into disrepute” from my time on the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s Infringements Committee and I am disappointed to report that all the American pharmacists I spoke to on this issue seemed ambivalent and demonstrated a collective insouciance. Commercial expedience obviously trumps and overrules any vestige of professional instinct or conduct. Needless to say, I was heavily dissuaded from taking a photograph of the instore displays.

Andrew McCoig
Croydon, Surrey

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