Today as I was at the Rite Aid pharmacy picking up a prescription, I noticed a strange policy regarding alcohol purchases. The man at the counter in front of me was attempting to pay for a prescription as well as pay for the twelve pack of beer he had grabbed from the cooler.
The pharmacist-assisstant informed the man that alcohol purchases had to be made up front at the main-store registers and that he couldn’t pay for the beer at the pharmacy counter. So he had to pay for his script and then carry the beer to the other registers and have another transaction take place. Seems awfully unneccessary to me. What gives? Why can you buy everything else that Rite Aid (as a store, not a pharmacy) sells at the actual pharmacy counter except for alcohol?
When my turn at the pharmacy counter came and I asked the pharmacy tech about this, he said it was “a very good question” that he couldn’t answer.
My best guess would be that it has something to do with the fact that pharmacies exist solely to dispense medicines, which are meant to heal and generally have positive health benefits; while alcohol is something that is seen as largely an intoxicant and (usually) devoid of health benefits and it would be sending the wrong message for a “place of health” to be peddling intoxicants.
But all that is a mighty stretch and it begs the question: why sell the stuff at all inside your place of business?
In my state (New Mexico) a special license is required for all bartenders, wait staff, and cashiers who sell alcohol. It is about a 6 hour class and a test, and you must be at least 21 yr. old. On the other hand I was a clerk/cashier in a pharmacy starting when I was 16. So a store might not want to pay adult wages to all the cashiers.
Are you sure that it’s only alcohol that can’t be purchased at the pharmacy counter? The Rite-Aid I use recently stopped allowing any purchases other than prescriptions at the pharmacy counter. My husband was told that it was because people were lining up at the pharmacy counter even when they weren’t picking up prescriptions, and allowing only those picking up prescriptions to make other purchases caused too many problems with confrontational customers.
That’s my guess. In Wisconsin it’s pretty similar but includes that someone with a license can oversee the sale. Instead of screwing around with that or getting the pharmacists another certification it’s just easier to send the few alcohol related sales up to the front register where they know how to deal with them.
All purchases other than alcohol (and tobacco); so yes, you could pay for the candy bar at the pharmacy. When I paid for my script today, I also paid for a Sobe Lifewater.
No, that’s not the case here. The main-store clerks are all minumum wage paid employees; many of them being teenagers or early twenty-somethings. I actually went and asked them about this as well and they told me that the tobacco purchases had to be made up front because all such products were kept behind the counter. They couldn’t tell me why the alcohol policy was the way it was though.
I was just at Target yesterday and my needs included decongestants (and the hassle a law-abiding allergy sufferer has to deal with to get effective decongestants is Pit-worthy). I had a few non-pharmacy items, and the nice clerk seemed to consider ringing everything in one batch simply a given. She was even patient with the grumbling over the decongestant red tape, which she said she hears several times a day.
Just FTR some of my early 20 something employees have their bartender’s license. It’s trivial* to put them through the class, have the city do a quick background check, a few other things and two weeks later they don’t have to call someone over to oversee liquor sales.
I’d be curious though, if one of these minimum wage teenage employees was at the front register, all alone with no one else anywhere in sight and you brought a bottle something alcoholic up to the register, if they had to call someone up. If they do, it could mean that the pharmacist doesn’t have a license. If they don’t it could mean that the they [the front end employee] does have one or just that some store/city/state/federal policy says that the pharmacy can’t sell alcohol.
*ETA It’s trivial to put them through the class if I think they’re going to be around for long enough that it’s worth it to me to pay for all of that.
While this isn’t exactly what I encountered today, it IS similar. These laws make it illegal to sell tobacco at the entire establishment; not just limit the sales to the pharmacy counter. But the philosophy at the heart of such laws (I believe the quote in the linked article was something like “pharmacies are where you go to get better, not cancer.”) is the same philosophy that shaped the policy at my Rite Aid.
The Wegmans supermarket near me doesn’t allow alcohol sales at their pharmacy dept. either. I believe it may be state law. Also, they won’t take your non pharmacy purchases unless you’re actually picking up a prescription. But that part is just store policy.
I live in upstate New York.
Wegmans stopped selling tobacco in their stores years ago due to increased state regulations and also because the store tries to promote healthy living.
In Green River, Wyoming there’s, or at least there was 20 years ago, a business whose sign proudly proclaimed, “Palmer’s Payless, Drugs, Guns, and Liquor.”
It’s a combination pharmacy, liquor store, and sporting goods store.
The big difference between such laws and policies that I encountered today at rite aid however, is that this rite aid still sold tobacco; it just had to be paid for at the main-store registers. Outlawing sales of tobacco products at entire establishments that are typically seen as establishments of “health” can be understood. But to still sell such products in these establishments while saying (rather arbitrarily IMO) that they can’t be purchased in-combination with prescription medication (but can be purchased individually) seems phony and greedy.
It doesn’t preclude alcohol sales law applying, even if the clerk didn’t quite understand that. In the UK, the premises has a licence to sell alcohol and someone in authority also has to have a personal license to sell alcohol. Staff without a personal license can still sell alcohol, but as an appointed proxy for the personal license holder. If no-one on the premises has a personal license, alcohol cannot be sold.
Now, in supermarkets, plenty of checkout staff do not have personal licenses - but they do have an always present supervisor who does. They get to approve sales of alcohol. Pharmacy staff do not have access to such a supervisor, so if there isn’t a license holder in the pharmacy, they would have to call for a supervisor, or (more likely) refuse the sale and send you to the main checkout. Also, pharmacy desks don’t have antitheft removal devices, so anything like that (including all spirits) has to go via the main checkouts.
This, like every other “Why?” question involving the law in the US, will depend entirely on your state.
In Florida, there are no alcohol-specific restrictions on age, personal licensure, or registers where a transaction may be processed within a store. People pay for their beer and scripts together all the time at my store, and tobacco would be viewed the same under state law. There is no legally required alcohol training, nor does anyone in the store have a license to sell alcohol except the store itself.
So, in order to answer anyone’s question about “Why?”, you’re gonna need to tell us what state you’re in.
From my pharmacy experience, it’s usually just a policy issue. They don’t want to be selling prescription meds and alcohol in the same location just because it looks bad. There is rarely a state law actually preventing this, it’s just about the perception of the profession.