ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, April 3, 1997 TAG: 9704030014
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CHRISTINA NUCKOLS THE ROANOKE TIMES
Ronnie Harvey believes selling unhealthy products would conflict with making people well.
A woman with a small boy tugging at her arm stood just inside the door of the Super D Drug Store in Southeast Roanoke. Her head swiveled back and forth as she scanned the aisles.
"Ya'll sell cigarettes in here?" she asked.
Pharmacist Ronnie Harvey froze for a moment, then looked at her over his shoulder.
"Bad for your health," he said.
She accepted the admonition without comment or visible emotion, took a brief but chaotic tour of the store as her toddler made a grab at a series of bottles and boxes within his reach, then left without making a purchase.
Harvey is accustomed to the question by now.
"I have people stick their heads in the door and just look four or five times a week," he said. "I say, 'Well, I only sell stuff to make you well, not to kill you.' Some of them, I know, have taken offense at what I've said, and others say, 'Yeah, I know, but I'm still going to smoke.'''
Customers at the store Wednesday afternoon said they approve.
"I admire him," Latachia Elswick said. "I think it's good, but I don't smoke."
Stephanie Rowe said she is a smoker, but added, "To me it would be hypocritical for him not to stand by his feelings and back up his opinions with his actions."
Harvey doesn't sell tobacco products or alcoholic beverages at his store, but he's not exactly a Puritan.
"I'm a chocoholic myself," he admitted. "At 12 o'clock every day, I've got to have a candy bar and a Coke."
Junk food has its place in the store, although he makes an effort to balance it with healthier choices. A display of soda pop greets customers at the door, but chilled fruit juices and spring water beckon to their right. Tootsie Rolls and caramels share candy counter space with dried banana slices, raisins and nuts.
As for some of his over-the-counter drug offerings, Harvey said he will, when asked, dissuade customers from using Nyquil and other cold medicines with a high alcohol content. He does, however, carry those products.
"I know the outcome of cigarettes," he said. "I don't know what 30 years of taking Nyquil will do to you."
Most drugstore chains sell beer, wine and cigarettes.
"Those are items that have traditionally been found in drugstores for as long as drugstores have been around," said Tom Dingledy, spokesman for Revco. "We believe it's an individual's decision whether to use them or not."
Harvey, whose white beard still contains more than a smattering of red whiskers, has spent most of his career bucking that industry standard.
Growing up just outside Martinsville, he was frequently in the local drugstores. He'd stop by as he walked to and from school or to purchase Paregoric, a tincture of opium now available only by prescription, for his grandmother.
Friends who were pharmacists encouraged him to pursue a career in the field. After graduating from the Medical College of Virginia, he moved to the Roanoke Valley. He worked for Kmart, then opened his first store, The Medicine Shop, in Vinton. He decided then that tobacco and alcohol would not share space with medicine.
"I refused to sell them because I felt there was a conflict with me being a pharmacist trying to keep people healthy," he said.
At that time, in the 1980s, smokers were more hostile than sheepish about their habit, and teen-agers could pull packs from vending machines at any gas station or greasy spoon.
Harvey's business was successful enough to attract the attention of SupeRx drugstores, which courted him for several years in an effort to buy him out.
"Finally, they caught me in the right mood and I said OK, you can have it if you want it more than me," he said.
SupeRx closed his shop, which he had operated for 13 years, and moved the customer records to its own store. Harvey came along as a pharmacist for the branch. He and partner Phil Gruber continued to operate a second independent store in Wirtz with SupeRx's blessings until the chain was gobbled up by Revco. Revco looked askance at the arrangement and Gruber was considering another job at the time, so the two sold that store as well.
Harvey opened Super D in 1995 with partners Gruber and Bruce and Judy Thompson.
Harvey admits his policy against tobacco and alcohol saves him time and headaches by avoiding the accompanying paperwork and regulations. But he chooses not to sell them for other reasons:
He is the father of a 15-year-old daughter who faces peer pressure to smoke and drink.
He is a medical school graduate who has cut into cadavers and seen lungs clotted with black tar.
He is a businessman whose health insurance premiums are inflated by avoidable illnesses.
He is the friend and relative of a half-dozen people who have died of lung cancer or emphysema.
And, he is a pharmacist, a profession that always ranks near the top on national trust surveys. He has no intention of betraying that trust.
"I don't need a buck that bad," he said.
LENGTH: Long : 105 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ERIC BRADY THE ROANOKE TIMES. 1. Ronnie Harvey, owner ofby CNBSuper D Drug Store in Southeast Roanoke, won't sell tobacco products
or alcoholic beverages. He has his vices, though: "I'm a chocoholic
myself. At 12 o'clock every day, I've got to have a candy bar and a
Coke." color. 2. Ronnie Harvey talks to 94-year-old Nora Lawhorn of
Stewartsville. A regular customer, she said Harvey is like one of
her grandchildren.