Apparently, Christian pharmacies are as successful as abstinence-only education:
The Divine Mercy Care Pharmacy in Chantilly proudly and purposefully limited what it would stock on its shelves. But it turns out that no birth control pills, no condoms, no porn, no tobacco and even no makeup added up to one thing:
No customers.
The self-described “pro-life” pharmacy went out of business last month, less than two years after it opened to great fanfare, with a Catholic priest sprinkling holy water on the strip-mall store tucked between an Asian supermarket and a scuba shop.
It seems when given cheaper alternatives in stores not staffed by busybodies, people choose to not shop at God Rx.
(via the comments)
*** Update ***
demkat620
But, but, but why didn’t god provide the profits?
Allan
They left the Underpants Gnomes out of the business plan.
Common mistake.
Trevor B
Actually less effective as some abstinence-only taught kids don’t get pregnant (the slim minority who actually don’t have sex), and all of the anti-abortion pharmacies are out of business.
BGinCHI
Why didn’t they just sell defective condoms?
Two birds with one stone….
Menzies
@Trevor B:
Exactly. Some of this is probably due to the fact that people do actually make abstinence-only a lifestyle, whereas these people are probably eyeing you from the moment you enter the store.
Cris
Though it was perhaps less germane to the topic, I liked cleek’s post title for this story better.
Tom levenson
Thanks! I needed some schadenfreude to bring an evil smile to my day.
Bubblegum Tate
Of course, the problem is that–you guessed it!–these wingnuts were totally acting like liberals! (emphasis mine; craziness all hers)
mai naem
Free market baby!!! Free market… Now maybe if they’d had Bristol Palin endorse them, they would still be in business.
Bad Horse's Filly
Obviously Satan is in charge of the free market, so they were screwed the moment they did this.
Tom Hilton
Next up: abstinence-only brothels.
HumboldtBlue
Christian pharmacists — the cilantro of the American medical industry.
Fergus Wooster
Bwahahahahahahahahahahaha. My day is made.
Also, I realize people have different opinions on cilantro, but comparing it to Christian pharmacists is unfairly defamatory to cilantro.
The Populist
Channeling my best Nelson Muntz imitation: HA HA!
Free markets right? If they choose to do something that people reject, do they wake up and offer these items with a Christian angle attached (i.e. – condoms behind counter so they can lecture young men to not have pre-marital sex?).
Linda Featheringill
Don’t these people read their bibles? The invisible hand is connected to Mammon. As in “you can’t serve God and . . . ”
Although there are a number of people who think that God is a capitalist. I really don’t know where they get that. Capitalism has existed only 400-500 years, depending on where you want to start counting.
The Populist
If God was a capitalist, what was Jesus? He gave stuff away, helped the neediest get fed and sacrificed HIMSELF for the greater good?
Interesting…he truly does fit the definition of a lib….I won’t say it.
Tonybrown74
@HumboldtBlue:
Lots of people actually like Cilantro. As with any seasonings, cilantro in moderation enhances flavor.
I think the problems is that too many people use it like salsa.
But we were talking about pro-life businesses, weren’t we …
beltane
What? You mean customers did not want to pay for the privilege of having a sanctimonious pharmacist stand in judgment of them for the meds they were prescribed? I am shocked. This will dash someone’s hopes for starting a new fast food change where the staff berates you for ordering French fries.
Comrade Dread
Well, I understand we have a lot of agnostic/atheists round these parts who are generally happy when bad things happen to organized religion, but isn’t the intent behind this pharmacy something you want Catholics and Christians and other religious groups to try?
You know, taking a positive action and opening their own stores that cater to their morals rather than trying to get legislation to make it a general law that stores can’t carry certain items?
Granted it didn’t work out for them this time, but I think their intention was a positive one.
Eric S.
@Allan: Win!
Tsulagi
Yeah, but I bet that scuba shop did big business in wetsuits and the Asian supermarket sold a lot of cucumbers for the more organically inclined pro-lifers. All they’d need in that strip mall is self-bondage gear and it’d be one-stop shopping.
hg
Hehe, scuba shop next door!! Thats where their clientele went :)
The Populist
@beltane:
Yep, people love talking about forcing religion into all aspects of society but when they have to DEAL with it, they pass. All talk…
maus
@Comrade Dread:
No. You and the “free market principle” seem to be under the illusion that every small town has an unlimited amount of choice.
vishnu schizt
I would figure the bag of carrots and wetsuit traffic would have kept the place at least somewhat busy. I assume they sold vaseline…
Menzies
@Comrade Dread:
This much is true. Most pharmacies where I’m from shy away from even having lad mags around, since almost everyone would be offended, and I’m fine with the condoms, birth control and similar goods being relegated to some hellhole as long as I can root through the aisles to get there. That much doesn’t bother me.
D-Chance.
Well, when little Mom-n-Pops are competing against Big Box Pharmas and Walmart… you’d think most of your lib-types would bemoan the loss of this alternative.
ChicagoTom
@Tonybrown74:
Lots of people actually like Cilantro. As with any seasonings, cilantro in moderation enhances flavor.
Mexican food is practially inedible without the Cilantro.
I make a mean homemade Pico de Gallo. But one day I forgot to add the Cilantro, and everyone kept saying how something was off or missing.
Then it dawned on me that I forgot the Cilantro, and I added it and everyone agreed it was much better.
Long Live Cilantro!
Carol
Maybe it was the religious music they were always playing, that cloying Amy Grant-like stuff.
But I think if you are going to be that particular, you need to open in a place with guaranteed traffic-like a megachurch facility. At least you can get people to come in before and after church functions. But next to a wetsuit shop and Asian market? Neither group are exactly known for going to church. The Asians are likely not Christian at all, and divers think Sunday is just an extra day to dive-even the devout ones probably go to an early service or pray dockside.
The Checkered Demon
@hg:
You know what they sell at the scuba shop?
Snorkels, that’s what.
ChicagoTom
@Comrade Dread:
but isn’t the intent behind this pharmacy something you want Catholics and Christians and other religious groups to try?
You know, taking a positive action and opening their own stores that cater to their morals rather than trying to get legislation to makee it a general law that stores can’t carry certain items?
I am glad they tried. And I am even more glad that they failed. It validates that their world view isn’t the primary/dominant one.
Nothing wrong with celebrating their failure, just like there is nothing wrong with hoping for Wal-Mart to be knocked off their perch as the worlds largest retailer.
This was a proof of concept. And their concept and business plan failed because the market spoke and said “No Thanks. Keep your morality to yourself, and don’t push it on me.”
Menzies
@The Populist:
This. One of my favourite Something Positive strips had a dialogue like:
Police officer: Do you even know what persecution means?
Kid: Yeah, it means you don’t do what I think is right.
Something I’ve noticed in a lot of the more fundamentalist Christians I know is a tendency towards automatic defensivism – they yell at other people so much for their “loose morals” that they assume theirs will be likewise impugned. Similarly I think a lot of hardcore Christians will get cold feet when they think they’re the ones being looked at askance.
ChicagoTom
@Carol:
But I think if you are going to be that particular, you need to open in a place with guaranteed traffic-like a megachurch facility
I may be mistaken, but I was pretty sure I had read somewhere that they chose a location close to a large church.
Personally, I think what really did them in was not selling make-up.
Even the most fundamentalist Christians aren’t going to go out in their community with no makeup on. (And why is makeup bad anyway?)
Jon H
Porn? I don’t think Walgreens, CVS, or Rite-Aid sell porn. Not even Playboy.
Zifnab
kill
Zifnab
Grr!
Zifnab
@D-Chance.:
Even the blind squirrel finds the nut, and I think D-Chance has actually hit on something here.
If Walmart decided to go the full fundie and banish condoms, liquor, and skin mags from it’s stores, I doubt the chain would go bankrupt. They’re still selling lawn chairs lovingly crafted in Commie China for the change from your pair of skid marked sweet pants.
The store probably went under for the same reason thousands of other businesses are going under. It’s a recession. The big boxes out-competed the small store. And hiring a full time pha rmacy staff is god-awful expensive with skyrocketing tuition and drug costs.
I doubt a secular ph armacy dedicated to b oner pills, fuzzy handcuffs, and nipple clamps would have done much better.
danimal
Fundamental misreading of the market.
You go to the mini-mall, pick up your two wetsuits, go next door to the ph armacy, and they don’t carry some “essential” items.
Carol
@ChicagoTom
But what church? And most of these days folks get in their cars and go to the nearest big pharmacy where they can get everything and have free parking as well, and then go to the nearest restaurant for Sunday Dinner. This place sounds like it was somewhere you had to make an extra effort to go to and to actually find-and of course it probably wasn’t open on Sunday, which cuts them out of that traffic as well.
Tom Hilton
I see the problem–it was a strip mall.
No, wait–that should have brought in tons of fundamentalist guys. Never mind.
Jamie
I wonder if they sold Viagra
hg
@The Checkered Demon: You forgot the wetsuits man! I hear wetsuits are the in thing right now.
PaulW
The pharmacy probably died because of poor location (how far was it from residences?) and competition from other existing stores that people were comfortable with (if you know a Walgreens, you go to other Walgreens. It’s why franchises / chain stores do well).
Also, it turns out the Moral Majority is Neither. Ever read MAD when you were a preteen? There was a funny spoof of daytime soaps – a mocking of General Hospital – where Marcus Welby showed up to clean up the show and make it wholesome. Three panels later, the ABC suits show up and note that their ratings are tanking – “It turns out people dig sex and violence!” – and send the Marcus Welby character back to selling coffee.
Garrigus Carraig
I understand the impulse toward schadenfreude, but if one can take the word of Pharmacists for Life International [grainofsalt /], the idea does in fact work — in Louisiana, Indiana, & the Flo-Rida. This one failed due to its location in the town, & maybe also in the state. I’m guessing you could fly one of these babies in a Jesusier part of Virginia, but why would you when Alabama beckons?
EDIT: How on earth do you type greater-than & less-than symbols if HTML doesn’t fly?
The Grand Panjandrum
So they got the Invisible Hand Job?
Comrade Dread
@maus:
Well, let’s see, if small town (X) doesn’t have a pharmacy to begin with, they’re already screwed and have to drive/walk/take the bus over to the next town that has a pharmacy.
I fail to see how encouraging/allowing religious people to be proactive and open up a business that would still meet the needs of a significant number of people is somehow less preferable than telling them to sod off and leave the community without a pharmacy where everyone has to make that trek to the next town or order online.
Yikes. Second comment in moderation on this thread. And I didn’t even say soshalism.
WereBear
Dude. Maybe not.
Comrade Kevin
Which, of course, is why Whole Foods Market is totally failing.
bemused
That was a well thought out business concept. Plop a pharmacy with a judgmental philosophy in a diverse neighborhood with 2 nearby pharmacies already there & it didn’t work out. Who could have anticipated?
Roger Moore
@Garrigus Carraig:
You use html escape codes, which are &thingy;. Less than is < and greater than is >. In case you’re wondering, ampersand itself is &.
ETA: FYWP. That should be “less than is & lt; and greater than is & gt;, but without the spaces, which WordPress requires that I put in or it will collapse the whole mess into the symbols that I’m putting a lot of effort into escaping.”
The Populist
@bemused:
Apparently either the owners really believed their approach would be embraced by like minded Christian holy rollers or that they have no concept of putting a store in an area that doesn’t have as much established competitition.
Probably a mix of both.
Comrade Dread
@ChicagoTom:
I grew up in some hard core Baptist church and they thought this, but I never got a good explanation of why, beyond talk about modesty and the like.
I think it’s just tradition from way back. Probably in the same vein as ‘wholesome women should only wear long skirts and dresses’.
bemused
@The Populist:
Magical thinking again.
TooManyJens
@Jon H:
Consider the source. They probably consider all those “women’s magazines” with their headlines about “10 ways to make sure you give him an orgasm!” porn. (I just consider them tacky and sexist and heterosexist.)
I’d rather have businesses like this than have pharmacists in mainstream stores refuse to sell contraception, but I’m also glad it failed. Seriously, do they not understand that something like 98% of people in this country will use birth control — or condoms for disease prevention — at one time or another?
Don’t even get me started on the idea that not selling condoms = “pro-life”.
Midnight Marauder
@HumboldtBlue:
I just want to let you know that I am thoroughly enjoying the continued development of this new tradition.
Carry on.
Mumphrey
Damn. I never even knew about this place, and it can’t be more than 10 miles from where I live. I feel cheated that I never chose not to shop there. I guess it’s all turned out the same either way, but I feel like I missed out on having the choice.
bemused
@Comrade Dread:
Using makeup would be vanity & also a sin in some churches. I suppose balding guys doing comb overs would get a pass.
Hart Williams
Just goes to prove what I’ve always maintained: The invisible hand always leaves a footprint.
Ken
@D-Chance.: You missed the point, D-Chance. This wasn’t Mom-and Pop; this was Bruchalski-and-God. Subtle difference, but significant.
kay
Boy, you couldn’t tell from looking at them that Christian conservatives oppose make-up.
Maybe they all have naturally blue eyelids? That must be it.
I think they’re getting it in a plain brown package, mail-order, from a central warehouse somewhere. Big ‘ol box ‘o makeup.
jamie
I’m certainly personally fine with their little experiment, but will confess to being more than a little perplexed by the notion that opening a store to specifically not sell what people want could possibly be a winning idea.
But then, some people still think near beer is a good idea, so what do I know.
jerry 101
@Linda Featheringill: Huh?
I’m guessing the Venetians might object, given that their commercial empire arose about a thousand years ago.
And, I’m pretty sure most of the ancient world was centered on systems that were very capitalist in orientation.
jake
Force poor people to have babies, and then attack them for not paying their fair share of taxes…
LuciaMia
Guess holy water doesn’t go as far as it used to.
The Populist
@jake:
Yep and stop people from having abortions yet cut funding for kids at risk activity programs, poor schools (where a lot of orphaned and poor kids go) and foster home programs.
Only in America where those whack jobs would call Jesus a traitor if he came back today.
ExtremismInTheDefenseOfLiberty
If you remember back to the first flame wars we had on this topic back in the day, we said that the whole point of pharmacy was to dispense. That’s it. It’s not a store, and it’s not a counseling center. It’s there to dispense to the orders of the doctor, period.
If you create a model where the dispenser just interferes with the dispensing, instead of just dispensing, you no longer need the pharmacist. Let them become moral watchdogs, they will find themselves out of work.
Voila. It seems the world doesn’t need a nanny pharmacist after all. Fuck them and their moralistic bullshit.
ExtremismInTheDefenseOfLiberty
If you remember back to the first flame wars we had on this topic back in the day, we said that the whole point of ph@rmacy was to dispense. That’s it. It’s not a store, and it’s not a counseling center. It’s there to dispense to the orders of the doctor, period.
If you create a model where the dispenser just interferes with the dispensing, instead of just dispensing, you no longer need the ph@rmacist. Let them become moral watchdogs, they will find themselves out of work.
Voila. It seems the world doesn’t need a nanny ph@rmacist after all. Fuck them and their moralistic bullshit.
scav
I thought god gave us free will? Got an issue with me using it? Take it up with him.
ExtremismInTheDefenseOfLiberty
Unfucking believable, the word ph@rmacist triggers the mod filter!
Pretty handy when you are trying to do a thread about a ph@rmacy. Really. Is Word Press owned by the Toyota Public Relations department?
The Populist
@scav:
God squad response:
Yes, God did give you free will sweetie, but you must still adhere to the bible and pray every night for forgiveness. You see, free will is a gift from God but you are still His child and as such must follow His rules.
Or some kind of stupid nonsense that goes nowhere.
ExtremismInTheDefenseOfLiberty
@The Populist:
Not unlike “Shut UP! That’s why.”
Just slightly prettier.
Hart Williams
We had one of those moral pukes at the pharmacy two doors down. Wouldn’t fill pill prescriptions, morning after pills, condoms, etc. So we, and everybody we knew, simply stopped going there.
Funny thing was, their overall sales went down drastically (also a ‘variety’ store) and suddenly, the pharmacist decided to take an early retirement. Customers came back. Sales went up. Everybody happy, except for Proselytizey McJeebuspants, who undoubtedly gnashes his teeth at night with the thought that now teenagers who have sex won’t be wrecking their lives.
Poor McJeebuspants!
Hart Williams
We had one of those moral pukes at the ph@rmacy two doors down. Wouldn’t fill pill prescriptions, morning after pills, condoms, etc. So we, and everybody we knew, simply stopped going there.
Funny thing was, their overall sales went down drastically (also a ‘variety’ store) and suddenly, the ph@rmacist decided to take an early retirement. Customers came back. Sales went up.
Everybody happy, except for Proselytizey McJeebuspants, who undoubtedly gnashes his teeth at night with the thought that now teenagers who have sex won’t be wrecking their lives.
Poor McJeebuspants!
scav
@The Populist: Pretty much what I thought. Twisted beggar. Created a grand world with do not touch all over it. Created a brain, told you not to use it. Hardened Pharoh’s heart and then killed the all first-born of Egypt on the strength of it. Insists his children be craven sycophants. Family values.
Honus
@Comrade Kevin:Lefties turn business decisions into moral decisions? Like all those contractors with a fish on their trucks?
Honus
@kay: not to mention in the event of a flood you could float a megachurch with the implants inside.
The Populist
@D-Chance.:
Not if they are going to be telling people what they can or can’t buy because it offends their “religious view”.
Sorry, I root for mom and pops all the time. Shit, I am part of the mom & pop world as I own a small business but I’ll be damned when pharmacies start telling me I can’t buy things that are LEGAL in this country.
Sly
Can’t blame them for trying. You do know what makeup, cigarettes, porn, and birth control all lead to, right?
Dancing.
asiangrrlMN
@ExtremismInTheDefenseOfLiberty: You got it in one. I don’t consider this kind of store positive in an area where women have no choice (unlike this one). And, no, it’s not better than nothing because it’s a deliberate smack in the face of women Everywhere. Like it or not, abortions are legal in this country. So are birth control pills. Don’t like it, don’t take the goddamn job. It’s what Rachel calls the Amish policy. A strict Amish person is not going to take a job where s/he has to, say, drive a car. Same thing here. Dispensing a legally-prescribed pill is against your religion? Get another fucking job.
christian love
Hi, I don’t come to an agreement with everything in this write-up, but you do make some very good points. I’m very involved in this matter and I myself do alot of research as well. Either way it was a well thoughtout and nice read so I figured I would leave you a comment.
lou
What AsiagrrlMN said. A lot of these stores are in rural areas where there aren’t a whole of other options if they refuse to dispense birth control pills.
horatius
This is much ado about nothing. As much as these clowns are to be blamed for their fundamentalism, their business plan is just as much to blame. There’s a CVS right behind this hick store on the other side right on the main road. I go to the Asian Supermarket and didn’t even notice this scumbag’s store. It’s as much as bad business plan as faith-based economics.