Nearly everything is kept under lock and key at some Big Apple drug stores — except the morning-after pill, which shoppers can pick up in bins by the checkout line alongside gum and hand sanitizer.
Pet food, socks, beauty products, chocolate and most everything else at the Duane Reade near Water and Wall streets in the Financial District are bolted behind plastic security cases, but $39.99 packages of the emergency contraceptive Take Action, which is intended to prevent pregnancy up to 72 hours after unprotected sex, is featured front and center.
The same was the case at a Duane Reade on John Street and another at the corner of Water and Fulton streets.
“That should be locked up behind the counter,” said stunned shopper Alex Nantes, 50, a native of Jackson Heights, Queens. “The priorities are backwards.”
“You would think it would be with the other birth control products, but it’s just out in the open next to the sunscreen,” said the father, who now lives in Florida and visited NYC this week with his 10- and 12-year-old sons.
“What about the kids seeing that stuff?” said Emily Ash, another Florida resident visiting New York. “They start questioning, ‘What’s that?’”
“It shows where people’s priorities are,” she said.
Dan Reilly, a construction worker from Greenpoint, scoffed at having easier access to the morning-after pill than the Red Bull he needed a sales associate to unlock for him on Thursday.
“I think it’s ridiculous,” said Reilly. “It just doesn’t make sense.”
The pink and white boxes were shown off in big clear bowls flanking the checkout line, along with items like Band-Aids for $2.79 and tissues for 99 cents.
Amid an ongoing shoplifting crisis across the city and country, Duane Reade is among the stores that have resorted to padlocking freezers of ice cream, and locking up Spam and tuna.
But the Take Action pills, which are available without a prescription for anyone over 15 years old, are unfettered in the display area, used by retailers to push “impulse” purchases of products such as candy and magazines while customers wait in line, according to marketing experts.
It’s “basically random,” a manager at the Wall Street Duane Reade said of the bin selections, but customers weren’t buying it.
“I guess it’s a high-demand product,” said one resident of the building above the store. “It must be the customer base.”
Other personal care products like lubricants, pregnancy tests and condoms were under lock and key.
Walgreens, which owns Duane Reade, did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the prominent placement of the pills.
