La Conner Weekly News - Your independent hometown award-winning newspaper

Last Thursday I reached out to Rep. Dave Paul (and our two other state reps as well) and shared my frustrations and asked for help over the La Conner Drug Store closing. Here is the core of my message to Rep. Paul:

Don’t know if you can do anything about this but I feel you should know that Rite Aid just purchased our only local pharmacy – La Conner Drug. This little business was first established in 1877. The corporate chain operation made this acquisition only to close the store and transfer the prescription files to their store in Anacortes (why?). We are truly distraught. Between our town, the people in Shelter Bay and the Swinomish tribe, a lot of folks have depended on this drug store for decades. My wife and I are seniors and, as you know, there are a lot of seniors on both sides of the Rainbow Bridge. Many of us find it challenging to get to Anacortes or Mount Vernon. What are we to do?

How can a big company just buy an important, historic and vital service to our community, only intending to eliminate it? It may be legal to do so, but this action certainly is neither ethical nor moral in our eyes. It severely injures us and leaves us reeling and seemingly without recourse. It appears to be nothing but pure avarice and lacks all social obligation. If corporations are really supposed to be considered “citizens” (according to the Supreme Court), then should they not also incur any/all responsibilities resulting from their actions? Citizenship has been defined as “the status of being a citizen, with its rights and duties.” What about the “duties” thing applying here? At the time of this writing, only one employee of La Conner Drug was offered a position with the new owners. The rest were told they could feel free to apply for jobs just like anyone else. Such caring, right?

I have no quarrel with anyone choosing to sell their business, but to me, this entire odious episode is yet another example of big corporate financial interests vs. the needs of small town, individual Americans. Once again we are being shafted and ignored. The big insurance interests; the big corporate medical interests; the big corporate retail chains and on and on and on. Who’s looking out for those of us who chose to live in our wonderful little towns? Who will question this path? Where/when will some lines be drawn? You know that our La Conner medical clinic was recently sold to the Everett Clinic, who themselves were then purchased by an even larger Optum Corporation. How long before the “numbers” just don’t add up the way they want them to and they too will be closing? After all, we can all go to Anacortes for care, right? What a rosy picture we see, heh? No medical practice, no pharmacy. What’s next? No market? No bank? No post office?

These big corporations and their willing enablers count on our sympathetic passivity to just “go along to get along”. It doesn’t matter if you are a Republican or a Democrat. It doesn’t matter if you are red, black, brown or white. It matters to our parents, grandparents, our children and their children too. It does matter to all of us regular citizens.

We ask for you to assist us in any way you can to correct this intolerable and heartless move. We really need help and soon.

In “fear and loathing” in La Conner.

Alan Darcy

Person, Citizen, American