Pharmacies that keep their condoms in locked cases cite shoplifting as the main rationale for the safe-sex lock-up. When shoppers are ashamed to buy sex-related items, the theory goes, they’re more likely to steal them—instead of sheepishly carrying them to the counter. But condom shame could hold a hidden benefit for pharmacies as well: When customers do buy condoms, they’re more likely to impulse-buy other items, as well.

Online pharmacy mastersdirect.com has conducted a survey about pharmacy shopping habits which is probably mostly bullshit. But the dubious reporting here may hold some truths about pharmacy hang-ups:

* “One out of 10 men said . . . they have had unprotected sex because they were too embarrassed to buy condoms from a pharmacy.”

* “A quarter has simply walked out of a pharmacy because they were too embarrassed to ask for a particular health product.”

* “Thrush creams, tampons and pregnancy tests also made people feel conspicuous. In an attempt to hide their embarrassment over their purchases, well over a third had even bought something they didn’t need as a ‘cover-up’.”

If the last statement is true, pharmacies may not be too eager to reduce the stigma of condom purchasing in their stores. If purchases of condoms, tampons, and lube are accompanied by a lucrative cover, why tone-down your employees’ sex-product gawking?

Personally, I’ve never been so embarrassed to buy a health product that I’ve walked out of the store. But I have definitely picked up a cover item or two to balance out my sex-related purchase. I usually go for the gummy bears—cheap, tasty, close to the counter. I can’t really explain why I find that necessary. Am I afraid the cashier will know that I’m on my period? That I plan to have sex soon? That I plan to have reduced-friction sex soon? Why, instead, would I prefer that the cashier know I’m bleeding out of my vagina, want to have sex, and require a snack?

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Tomorrow, Cure CVS Now and a coalition of public health advocates will gather outside the Dupont Circle CVS store in an attempt to pressure the pharmacy chain to rethink its locked condom policies. The ultimate goal of the “rally and press conference” is to convince “CVS to adopt a corporate policy to keep all condoms unlocked at all times.” A letter to CVS CEO Tom Ryan will be unveiled!

Gina Bowers of Cure CVS Now admits that the CVS store at 6 Dupont Circle does not lock up its condoms—and that D.C. CVS stores are freer than in many other cities with high HIV rates across the country. “We wanted to do this in D.C. to focus on the national nature of our campaign, but we also want to acknowledge that we are doing this on the backs of the activists who have had success in unlocking the condoms there,” she says. Though the District of Columbia has been somewhat of a success story for public health groups like Cure CVS Now and Save Lives, Free the Condoms, Bowers says that the condom-freeing work—in D.C. and elsewhere—isn’t done until a national policy is in place. “One thing our researchers have found is that many stores only unlock the condoms for a while, and then lock them back up again,” she says.

More details about the rally:

WHAT: Rally and press conference

WHO: National Organization of Women (NOW); Advocates for Youth; ACT UP; Latino Commission on AIDS; Black Women for Wellness; Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Project (CHAMP); more.

WHEN: 12:30 PM EST Thursday, June 11, 2009

WHERE:

CVS/pharmacy
6 Dupont Circle
Washington, D.C.

Photo by NCinDC

Via Feministe: Advocates for Youth, in conjunction with Cure CVS Now, has created a petition to tell CVS to unlock the condom cases in its stores:

Call on CVS to unlock condom cases in all its stores. Locked condoms create a barrier to condom access, and could be a threat to public health. CVS’s practice of locking condom cases in minority neighborhoods is unacceptable, and we urge CVS to change its store policy. Walgreens and Rite-Aid prohibit condom lock-up: it’s time CVS did the same.

CVS claims to have unlocked all of the condoms in its Washington, D.C. stores. Last month, I wrote a story about how, despite the lip service, condom access in our CVS stores remains a pain in the ass. Unlocking the condoms and then placing them into click-boxes which are often broken—and sometimes actually locked!—isn’t good enough. Perhaps the petition should read: Unlock the condoms. For real this time, guys.

Sign the petition here.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Last week, I wrote about how CVS Pharmacies in Washington, D.C. are continuing to limit access to condoms by locking up some stores and declining to work with public health activist groups. The main problem with condom lock-up is that it forces customers to interact with several employees, wait around in front of the condom box, and verbally request the product. In short, it’s embarrassing.

Sometimes, the employees make it more so. I stopped by a CVS in Los Angeles last week to pick up some personal items—not condoms, though. I approached the cashier with a box of tampons, some Midol, and a pack of gum. I was with a boy.

The cashier rung up my merchandise, requested my CVS card, and delivered my change. Then, she said this to us:

“You kids have fun this weekend, whatever you do or don’t do!”

Whatever we “do” or “don’t do”? You got us good, CVS. I thought your employees could only make me uncomfortable about doing it when I bought something actually related to sex. Now I know you can make me uncomfortable about doing it (or not doing it!) when I buy anything at all!

Photo by Editor B

Three years ago, if you were to walk into a CVS store in search of condoms, you’d face about a 50 percent chance of hitting a brick wall. In 2006, 22 of about 50 CVS stores in the District of Columbia were guarding their condoms under lock and key. The glass-case treatment was reserved for neighborhoods with the greatest need for contraceptives—the wards with the highest rates of HIV.

Securing a three-pack of Trojans required you to alert an employee who would escort you to the glass condom case, unlock it, wait as you made your selection, then lock the case again behind you. The purchase could be further complicated by wait time, employee attitude toward condoms, and the customer’s level of shame—all factors which could deter a potential buyer from preventing the spread of HIV.

CVS brass, however, was more interested in protecting the condoms from those who refused to buy. The locks were in place to prevent shoplifters from “grabbing a whole bunch of condoms and running out of the store,” says CVS spokesperson Mike DeAngelis. “The stores that had to keep condoms locked experienced shoplifting to such a degree that our entire inventory was being wiped out,” he says. “There were no longer condoms available for customers to purchase.”

In the fall of 2006, CVS managers around the District began to reevaluate the policy. Twenty-one of the stores have taken contraceptives out of the cases, leaving only one Southeast stalwart with locked-up rubbers. But the managers weren’t unlocking of their own volition: They were just appeasing the activists. 2006 is also the year that students from the George Washington University’s School of Public Health and Health Services launched “Save Lives: Free the Condoms.” The campaign, now administered through the Metropolitan Washington Public Health Association, was targeted specifically at CVS’ condom policies. Over the next two years, Save Lives formed a coalition with other public health groups, drummed up media attention, and then, store by store, convinced CVS to free its contraception.

Though locked glass cases are still employed in the pharmacies to protect precious items like soap, toothbrushes, pregnancy tests, and lube, condoms have been upgraded from “locked” to simply “inaccessible.” But with the help of some new technology and a little repression, CVS condoms are still hard to reach in the areas that need them most. According to GW professor Caroline Sparks, who helped launch the campaign, “it is a misapprehension that condoms are now unlocked in Washington.”

—

MEET THE “POWER WING.” Post-emancipation, CVS condoms migrated from the glass case to the “power wing.” The wings, in shelf-talk, are displays that feature limited supplies of certain highlighted products like sunglasses, batteries—and now condoms. The wings are designed to encourage a well-intentioned customer to grab one pack of condoms, while preventing shoplifters from making off with armfuls.

Shumaya Ali, one of the original GW students involved in the campaign, says “limited” is the key word in the power wings’ limited supply. “At first we said, well, it’s better than having everything locked up,” says Ali. “But when we did a follow-up survey, we would go to stores and see the shelves empty, or see that many sizes were still not available.”

An empty power wing is on par with a locked case—it means that customers must grovel with a CVS employee to retrieve condoms from the back. The liberating quality of the new policy depends upon how regularly employees restock the merchandise. Access to stocked shelves also varies by neighborhood. A national CVS watchdog organization, Cure CVS Now, collects user-submitted photos of “good” and “bad” CVS stores, often determined by a neighborhood’s median income and racial makeup. In the photos, a sparse dairy case in Compton is slicked with brown and black liquid, while a Beverly Hills case is fully stocked with fresh milk; a Detroit freezer case is littered with gnawed sunflower seeds, while one in Rochester Hills, Mich., is sanitarily stocked with frozen pizzas.

Jana Baldwin, a current campaign member, says the stocking disparity is no coincidence. “What I personally found, and continue to find on my 17 or so visits to various CVSs around D.C., is that when there are the power wings in the deemed ‘high-theft’ CVS locations, they are not well-stocked,” she says. “Interestingly enough, when I have spoken with managers about why they are not well-stocked, many have said that it is not because there have been condoms stolen, per-se—it is because they want to prevent theft,” she says. “So it doesn’t really make sense.”

According to Ali, the move to power wings didn’t do much to solve the disparity issue, but it did help CVS address another problem: public relations. “It was a small step that showed we were getting through to CVS,” she says. “But it didn’t actually improve anything.”

—

MEET THE “CLICK-BOX.”

Though many CVS stores continue to tout the power wing, some have installed a more sophisticated contraption: the click-box. These clear plastic vending machines, which push out condoms at the push of a button, are modeled after CVS’ mechanism for dispensing razors. The device has streamlined the condom-selecting experience down to three simple steps: 1. Push the red button, 2. Pull the handle on the drawer, and 3. Remove the product. Some click-boxes have included an additional recommendation between steps two and three: “Wait for product to dispense.”

At CVS’ Columbia Heights store, some customers have had trouble waiting for the product to dispense. On a Friday night, CVS shift supervisor Dre apologizes for the store’s barely functional click-box, where red buttons rarely manage to push out the correct product. “Sometimes it gets stuck when someone sticks their hand in there before it’s ready,” Dre says. When the machine is broken, Dre is on call to unlock the click-boxes and retrieve the condoms. “It’s crazy, but that stuff gets stolen like crazy,” he explains. “I mean, I think they should be free.”

Even fully functional click-boxes are often monitored by additional store security. Many are situated right in front of the pharmacy counter, where whitecoats can watch your every move—or at least hear it. Pushing the red button triggers a loud grinding noise that makes the experience less than discreet.

Still, most of the time, you don’t have to explicitly inform an employee that you want them “ribbed for her pleasure”—as long as the condom makes it out of its cage. Campaign member Noraine Buttar recalls the consequences of reaching too deeply into a click box: “Someone who was working there walked by and snapped, ‘That’s not how you do that,’” she says. “That sort of reaction means that the process can still be very embarrassing for some people.”

The highly supervised, one-box-at-a-time method proved too liberating for one CVS store in 2007. Many click-boxes are fortified with additional locks, which can swing down over the case at the manager’s discretion. Save Lives: Free the Condoms staged a protest outside of one Petworth CVS when it found that the store’s click-box remained locked during business hours—meaning you needed an employee’s help in order to push the button to pull the handle to remove the product. According to the GW Hatchet, the CVS store unlocked the click-box in the course of the protest, but the store’s manager can’t confirm it: “I couldn’t talk to you about that,” he says. “We’re not allowed to talk to anyone about anything, regardless.”

—

MEET THE “GAG ORDER.”

The Petworth manager was just following another CVS post-lock-up strategy. While competitors like Walgreens and Rite-Aid institute company-wide policies ensuring that condoms stay on open shelves, CVS has continued to delegate condom management to a store-by-store basis. CVS’ reluctance to institute companywide policies aside, the pharmacy has instituted at least one order: Employees are not to comment on the issue.

Save Lives: Free the Condoms encountered the gag order midway through its campaign. “We started negotiating at the national level, and while we were in the process of debating with CVS, lots of news releases were coming out about us, supporting our campaign,” says Ali. “Meanwhile, CVS was going behind our back and changing policies store-by-store—starting to put up the clear dispensers and power wings,” she says.

CVS’ strategy—eliminating locks while avoiding a larger discussion—lead to the swift emancipation of dozens of CVS stores. It also left Save Lives: Free the Condoms shut out of the post-lock discussion. “What we want is a comprehensive policy from CVS,” says Ali. “What they did was just take very small steps at the stores where they were pushed hardest, in order to avoid the press.”

Even as it rolled out the new devices, Buttar says, CVS refused to extend the discussion. After sending e-mails and placing phone calls in an attempt to open a dialogue with CVS, its communications team “started blocking our e-mails,” Buttar says. “I could tell what happened—they were coming back immediately with this message saying, “This address no longer accepts e-mails from your address,” Buttar says. Adds Sparks, “Historically, corporations that have consumer problems have two options: They can negotiate in good faith, or they can try to circle the wagon,” she says. “CVS has decided to circle the wagon, thinking that the whole thing would go away. But the whole thing has not gone away.”

At the CVS stores I called, store managers refused to comment on the state of their condoms, pushing queries to the corporate line—where DeAngelis, in turn, wouldn’t comment on individual stores’ practices. The information gap makes things harder for the Save Lives campaign, which must mount new inspections of CVS stores to ensure that the pharmacies aren’t backsliding. In February, Baldwin visited the CVS location at 2646 Naylor Road SE, where she found the click-box locked. Since that precaution can be added and removed instantly, Save Lives: Free the Condoms can never say for sure how many condoms remain locked. When called, that store’s manager wouldn’t discuss power wings or click-boxes, but he would offer one line: “We do not lock our condoms.”

DeAngelis says that the new devices have been effective in decreasing shoplifting—and activist attention. When asked how free-condom activists have responded to power-wing and click-boxes, DeAngelis pleaded ignorance: “I’m not aware that they’ve been in touch recently,” he says.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

To the Employees of Several Washington-Area CVS Stores:

I understand that your CEO, Thomas Ryan, has stated that the CVS name stands for “Convenience, Value, and Service.” This letter takes issue with the third.

It has recently come to my attention, upon purchasing Sensitive Lady Products at several Washington-area CVS stores, that the employees tasked with accepting my payment for these products have not received proper training in How to Not Act Like A Jerk to the Ladies Who Purchase Sensitive Lady Products.

I understand it may be difficult to know how to handle the sale of a Sensitive Lady Product. Perhaps you’re afraid of offending a lady who may be sensitive about purchasing a Sensitive Lady Product; perhaps you have personal religious or political beliefs that require you to be sort of a jerk about doing your job. But you guys are Sensitive Lady Product sales professionals, and you should know how to properly conduct yourselves. Here are some tips.

How to Not Act Like A Jerk to Ladies Purchasing Sensitive Lady Products:

1. When your supervisor asks you to open the locked glass case that holds the Sensitive Lady Product I require, do not make small-talk speculating as to why I require it.

2. Don’t suggest which one I should get, either. You’re a dude.

3. On second thought, just don’t lock up your Sensitive Lady Products.

4. Instead, try to consider why you might have needed to lock them up in the first place. Hmm, maybe it’s because you’re total jerks to the people who buy them?

5. When it comes time for me to exchange money for the Sensitive Lady Product, look me in the eye.

6. Respond when I say “thank you.”

7. If you really cannot acknowledge that I am a human, at least ask if I have a CVS card! I can use some savings on these Sensitive Lady Products!

Sincerely,

A purchaser of Sensitive Lady Products.

View Larger Map

CVS, 1702 Columbia Rd. NW (and various).

This D.C.-dominating chain addresses the birth control question as it does all things: with impatient efficiency. “Yes, yes, yes,” said the pharmacist on call at CVS’ Adams Morgan location when asked about birth control, emergency contraception, and abortion pills. Plan B will run you up to $50; abortion pills such as Mifeprex, which induces contractions to terminate pregnancy, are available with a prescription but could take a few days to stock if not currently on shelves. Condoms, 48 varieties of them, are offered up like vending machine candy bars: Push button, pull lever, remove product.

Mike DeAngelis, public relations director for CVS, explains the chain has a “policy to fill prescriptions for all legally prescribed medications,” including birth control and emergency contraception. (Though the FDA approved over-the-counter sale of emergency contraception in 2006, a prescription is still needed for patients under 18 years old). However, Joe Pharmacist can opt out of filling your pill prescription. “Under federal law and some state laws, we must also accommodate a religious conviction that may prevent a pharmacist from dispensing a medication,” DeAngelis says. Under that circumstance, however, “other arrangements can be made in advance to ensure the customer’s prescription needs can be satisfied.”

KNOCK-UP RISK: Low, low, low. Next.