Much as I’m happy to see fewer cigarettes in the world, I find it hypocritical and annoying that CVS is bragging about taking this brave stand, and yet the stores are still selling homeopathic remedies.
Maybe homeopathic remedies don’t cause cancer, but if you ask me, they’re a bigger rip-off than cigarettes-- with cigarettes, you are getting what you pay for, which is a nicotine delivery system with lots of dangers that only a salamander could be unaware of. Homeopathic “remedies” are lies. Generally, you get nothing for your money other than some distilled water and a lot of packaging; rarely, you may get a mistake: someone may not have diluted properly, and you may get an infant’s teething remedy with toxic amounts of belladonna (deadly nightshade). This happened once, and there was a recall. :smack:
I’m not ready to boycott CVS, or anything, over the hypocrisy, because it would be in favor of a store that sells cigarettes as well as homeopathic remedies, more than likely, although quite honestly, I’d sooner go somewhere that sold cigarettes, but refused to sell homeopathic products on principle. Anyone who knows how I feel about cigarettes (second-hand smoke makes me sick, literally: I get headaches and rashes and other allergy symptoms, as well as having trouble breathing if I’ve been around it too long; I don’t care what reports say about its relative safety-- I’m probably allergic to tobacco, so I may be a rare case, but so be it) knows that is a pretty strong statement.
Being in a country where cigarettes aren’t sold at drugstores/pharmacies (and don’t think they have been during my lifetime,) I find it strange that they’d be sold at all in drugstores recently. And I also think that homeopathic remedies are garbage and that they should’t be sold anywhere.
I don’t know how it is there, but CVS in the US isn’t just a pharmacy…it’s a convenience store too, so they’ve got food, drinks, cleaning supplies, paper products, toys, electronics, and all sorts of stuff. So, it sort of makes sense from that standpoint that they would sell cigarettes, because they sell all sorts of other non-medical stuff too.
Oh, be sensible! There are far too many drug molecules in tap water for it to be considered homeopathic.
CVS seems to be conforming to the “Do no harm” principle, and there are probably lots of other useless things that they are willing to take your money for … lottery tickets, bottled water …
I was looking for something to help me get to sleep recently, and the first thing woman behind the counter at the pharmacy was a homeopathic remedy. I had to restrain my temper, because it’s basically like saying, “I’ll sell you this awesome ferrari”, and then they baldfacedly show you a unicycle that’s missing a wheel. It’s blatant fraud. You’re trying to scam me out of my money, and I’m not having it! When I explained to her that I’m well aware that homeopathy doesn’t work, she responded with “well, it seems to work just fine for plenty of people”. No, I’m sorry. The layman may not understand what’s wrong with this statement, but you sell medicine for a living. You had better fucking understand this shit! It’s your goddamn job to understand this shit! The fact that I, with no formal medical training whatsoever, understand this better than you, means you should be fired and replaced with someone who actually fucking knows something about the medicine you’re selling! :mad:
In fairness, if there’s a placebo effect, she may not be lying that it seems to work just fine for plenty of people. Also, it’s not surprising that pharmacies are pushing homeopathic remedies. Think of the margins on those things!
I’m more offended by the other products they continue to sell that cause actual harm, like calorie rich, nutrient barren junk food. I really don’t get why they feel it’s any less hypocritical to sell that in the current obesity epidemic than it was to sell cigarettes.
I’m not a fan of homeopathics; I don’t use them or recommend them, but I do feel like if people want their placebos, they’re welcome to them. Whether or not they work, they are at least in line with CVS’s image as a store concerned with health, which is what this whole cigarette thing was about. It’s annoying, but it’s not inconsistent.
I was at Whole Foods the other day (they opened the first one near here a few months ago and I decided to see what they had) and found myself walking down the homeopathy aisle. On the shelf, with an employee guard next to the section, was a hundred dollar half-ounce bottle of water.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I need to get out of the actual drug products business and into the homeopathy/supplements business. No FDA oversight and easy money from gullible morons. Just make sure your claims aren’t too specific, like essential oils cure Ebola.
One thing I have seen recently and find funny as hell is fake homeopathic stuff. A couple times I picked up a box, only to notice the word “Homeopathic” boldly printed. But then checking the ingredient list, it had the same amount of the good stuff as that type usually has.
I guess they figured, okay Homeopathy doesn’t mean anything specific, and isn’t regulated, so we’ll slap the word on there on there to get the morons to buy, but keep the real stuff in it to sell to the people who aren’t.
Well yeah, but you’d expect a goddamn pharmacist to understand that the placebo effect alone does not a good medicine make! Unfortunately, no such luck.
Brilliant! If I were the guy who’d thought of this, I’d be patting myself on the back for a long time to come.
And in this era where you can patent business practices and such, I wouldn’t be surprised if he or his company could patent the idea of selling regular-strength OTC drugs as homeopathic remedies.
Yeah, but you just know there’s a hemeopathy blog out there somewhere who figured it out and is screaming “DON’T GET THIS FAKE HOMEOPATHIC STUFF BECAUSE IT’S BIG PHARMA TRYING TO CAPITALIZE ON OUR LAST BULWARK OF NATURAL MEDICINE!”
I think that for a lot of folks who aren’t active skeptics or otherwise specifically interested in this stuff “homeopathic” is basically understood as a synonym for “natural” or “herbal”.
