This middle aged guy paid for his prescription and his package of Camel cigarettes with a ten dollar bill. The prescription was around $8.00 and the Camels came to less than a dollar. Today, the cash Rx would cost an average of more than $80.00 and the cigarettes more than $5.00, depending on the state. Of course, this incident was more than 20 years ago. It was the last time I took money for tobacco products.
I had manager problems about that, when customers complained about having to make two sales, but I was steadfast. Eventually, the rest of the pharmacy staff jumped on the wagon. No tobacco products were sold at the pharmacy. The manager blamed me. He complained to the pharmacy district manager, but it was too late.
John and Dante wrote about cigarettes and pharmacy in the Message Board. They reminded me of the Camel cigarettes event. In the 1980s, I did not care if people smoked. I was an inveterate smoker myself so I understood this man’s need for nicotine.
I lit a cigarette in the morning before my first sip of coffee. I smoked all day long. I smoked at dinner, in the car and in the pharmacy.
Everyone in that pharmacy smoked. We had a big ashtray over by the sink, out of sight from the public. There were no rules about smoking in California in those days. It wasn’t until I moved to Washington State that the pharmacy staff was prohibited from smoking in the pharmacy.
I had no clue that my clothes stunk until I quit smoking in 1990. A month after my last cigarette, my sense of smell came back. I spent a day laundering everything I owned. Giving up my best friend was the hardest thing I have ever done and the best thing. Cigarette smoking and the rituals around smoking were the most consistent things I did. I repeated the addictive ceremonies at least 30 times a day.
So why did a smoking pharmacist make such a big deal about a smoking patient? This is why! This guy wore an outlaw-type mask over his lower face. He had no lower jaw. A lot of his face was missing. He was a survivor of cancer surgery.
After he paid for his prescription and Camel cigarettes, he opened the package, shook out a Camel and started to smoke it by sticking the cigarette into his tracheotomy hole. He had no mouth. He could not talk. I suppose he ate through a tube. He hid his face behind the mask because he was so badly deformed that he did not want people to stare.
I wondered if it was cigarettes that caused the cancer. I was brave enough to ask him. He wrote down his two word answer: Dipping tobacco. And that was enough for me. I had sold cigarettes to healthy young people, young women who took oral contraceptives. I always told them of the dangers, but they just gave me a mind-your-own-business look. Selling cigarettes at the pharmacy was just something that everybody did. Not for me after the faceless guy and his tracheotomy hole. The Camel cigarette fit perfectly, by the way.
And that was it for me. The man without a face did not just get me to stop selling.
The picture of him in my mind’s eye was a huge factor in getting up the chops to quit tobacco myself.
I agree with John and Dante. A drug store is not the place to sell tobacco products.
JP
Dec
15
2005
15
2005
