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Wal-Mart, the nation's largest retailer, has come under attack recently because it refuses to stock Preven in its 2,400 pharmacies.
Preven is also known as the morning-after pill.
If a woman takes it within 72 hours after unprotected
sexual intercourse, then her chances of getting pregnant
are reduced by 75 percent.
Wal-Mart officials said this was strictly a business decision -- that they didn't think they'd sell enough Preven to make it worth the expense of maintaining an inventory. Shelf space inside the pharmacy alcove, like shelf space everywhere else in the store, costs money, and if the inventory doesn't turn over quickly, Wal-Mart doesn't want it.
Some critics have pointed out that Wal-Mart stocks
Viagra for men. They charge that the chain's refusal to
stock Preven for women is the result of sexism. Or it
could be cowardice, since Wal-Mart caters to
conservative, small-town America
where right-to-life
pickets and boycotts are a possibility if Wal-Mart sold
something that allowed people to enjoy themselves without
incurring certain responsibilities.
As a resident of conservative, small-town
America,
I've generally considered my children a
delight, rather than as some sort of punishment for having
sex, but then again, I'm probably not as pro-family
as some of my alleged hayseed neighbors.
Somebody needs to look on the bright side of Wal-Mart's refusal to stock Preven, as well as some of Wal-Mart's other policies -- it's the way that Wal-Mart assists the small-town merchants that it otherwise tries to drive out of business.
Consider music. Wal-Mart wants a fast turnover on its racks, so it doesn't stock much besides the best-selling CDs and tapes.
Wal-Mart also assumes that its rural customers enjoy little besides country music, so its stock of other genres -- blues, folk, classical, etc. -- is rather meager.
The store does profess to special-order items not on the shelves, but even that is rather limited. I can recall, probably a decade ago, trying to find a tasteless CD -- it was either Mojo Nixon or the Rev. Billy C. Wirtz -- and being told by the Wal-Mart clerk that the artist did not exist, since the opus was not in the Wal-Mart catalog.
Further, Wal-Mart does not carry any music with Tipper
Gore's parental advisory
label, thereby trying to
insure that no adult is exposed to anything deemed
inappropriate for 10-year-olds.
Add all that up, and there's a niche for a local music store, even in a town as small as Salida.
My friend Dave Ward might have to close his Road House Music in downtown Salida if Wal-Mart treated music like part of our culture, rather than as a bulk commodity with a limited shelf-life. But Dave seems to be doing okay, and Wal-Mart seems to be doing its best to keep him in business.
Books are another example -- our Super Wal-Mart, which opened a couple of years ago, offers a shelf of discounted best-sellers.
That worried local bookstores at first -- until they discovered that Wal-Mart treats books pretty much the same way it treats music, and thus leaves a niche for a small business that cares about intelligent service to its customers.
Sometimes the Wal-Mart niche-creating deficiencies are not immediately apparent. I bought a lawnmower there once. The grass-catcher bag wore out about a year later, and I went to get another bag, only to learn that Wal-Mart did not stock, or even order, such items.
That lawnmower died last month, and I didn't even bother to price the mowers at Wal-Mart. The company's refusal to support the last lawnmower it sold me meant that it wasn't offering any bargains.
In other words, if I bought a $150 mower there, and it came to need a $30 part that Wal-Mart wouldn't sell, then my only option would be to buy another $150 mower -- total cost $300.
If instead I bought a $200 mower at Gambles and it needed a $30 part a while later, I'm out only $230. So off to Gambles I went when it was mower time. Plus, they delivered it, and it was fully assembled, gassed up and ready to go.
Thus does Wal-Mart allow, or even encourage, other enterprises to stay in business, despite its formidable reputation as a one-stop retailer.
The corporate decision not to handle Preven in Wal-Mart pharmacies was regrettable on some grounds -- it's one of those things that if you need it, you need it right away.
But on the other hand, the Wal-Mart decision will help preserve some of America's independent small-town pharmacies, where the customer's medical needs might be more important than inventory turnover times or corporate image concerns.
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