Content about In this Issue

NORTH BETHESDA, Md. — The industry has lost a true “patriot of pharmacy practice” in longtime industry veteran Leonard “Len” DeMino, who passed away on Sept. 16. DeMino was 81.

Under fire. That is the best way to describe the current state of the proposed $29 billion mega-merger of two of the nation’s three largest pharmacy benefit managers, and the fierce resistance it is drawing from pharmacy and consumer groups. If the plan is approved, Express Scripts will emerge as a PBM giant with a network covering some 135 million members.

It is no surprise that hair coloring continues to see growth at food, drug and mass as beauty mavens increasingly turn to more cost-effective, at-home beauty regimens 
and manufacturers continue to turn up the notch on innovation, developing such products as no-drip foam formulas.


As anticipated, sales of hair coloring 
at food, drug and mass (excluding Walmart) 
were up 5.2% for the 12 weeks ended Aug. 7 to $254.3 million, according to SymphonyIRI Group.


Americans spend three to four hours a day in the kitchen, so housewares — particularly kitchenware — can be a key gift category for drug stores. The channel had a 4.2% share of the housewares business, according to the International Housewares Association’s “2010 State of the Industry Report.” Much of the channel’s sales come from cookware, bakeware and kitchen tools.


As the clock winds down on the patent exclusivity of the industry’s biggest blockbuster drug in November, speculation continues to grow that Pfizer will look to flip the switch on an OTC version of Lipitor (atorvastatin) before generic competition whittles away at the $7 billion behemoth. 


At press time, Hurricane Irene was slowly barreling toward the East Coast and threatening the area with a deluge that prompted cities to shut down and had store shelves wiped clean.



Somewhere along the road back from Boston, DSN publisher Wayne Bennett and I looked at each other and realized that the previous 24 hours or so had been some of the most productive time we had enjoyed at a trade show in quite a while. To be honest, that’s not exactly what we had expected when we headed to the National Association of Chain Drug Stores’ Pharmacy and Technology Conference a day earlier. Hurricane Irene — which had already dampened our travel plans — also had dampened our expectations.



Pharmacist Society — which Drug Store News introduced at the National Association of Chain Drug Stores’ 2010 Pharmacy and Technology Conference in San Diego and launched in November 2010 under a partnership with professional networking website developer Skipta — has grown to more than 35,000 members and combines networking, job searching, continuing education and other services in a regulated user environment.


A worldwide flood of counterfeit and unsafe medications is seeping into the United States and other developed countries via the Internet and porous borders, threatening public health and the security of the pharmaceutical supply chain. In response, federal drug safety overseers and such drug manufacturers as Pfizer are working to shore up the integrity of drug supplies and stop production of fake and adulterated pharmaceuticals at their source.



Dispensing narcotics and other highly abused prescription drugs, pharmacies have always been potential targets for robbery and burglary. But a series of violent crimes over the past year and a half — including the killing of a pharmacist, a teenage clerk and two customers in Medford, N.Y., in June, as well as the murders of a pharmacist in Trenton, N.J., and a store clerk in Sacramento, Calif. — have thrown a spotlight on the dangers faced by pharmacy workers and customers, and have galvanized public opinion for tougher laws.


“[Charlie] never wanted the spotlight,” long-time friend and colleague Al Kraus noted in an online post, recalling a conversation with Charlie Bowlus over a drink one night in 1994, at the end of the very first ECRM show. “His first show had maybe 80 people. ... I asked him if he made any money on the show. He said, ‘I don’t know, but a lot of people did business, and it was a hell of a party.’”