Is Walgreens the New WalMart?

Is it just me, or is there a new Walgreens popping up every two seconds?  Actually, for a while there, a new Walgreens was being opened every 17 hours!  EVERY 17 HOURS?!?  Just recently, as reported in the Chicago Tribune, the nation's largest drugstore chain has announced plans to slow down its seemingly unmitigated expansion and put its plans to take over the world on hold.  Now they'll only be opening a new store every 24 hours---that's down from the current 500 stores a year to a measly 365 stores a year!  How wonderful---that's a new Walgreens for every day of the year!  It's almost like having Christmas all year 'round!  Now, "144 million Americans live within two miles of a Walgreens drugstore, the company said, and 36 percent of the 6,297 existing Walgreens stores are less than 5 years old."  Geesh!  Is there even enough land in this country to accommodate so many new stores?  What is the environmental impact of this obscene expansion? 

This got me to thinking---is Walgreens the new Walmart?  For years I've been railing against Walmart for its practice of closing down existing stores to replace them with Supercenters, while leaving "some 28 million square feet of empty space today in communities across the country."  In 2002, former Walgreens CEO David Bernauer said of Walmart's expansion, "The more Wal-Mart builds, the better for us because every store they open kills two of our smaller competitors."  Ah, birds of a feather stick together as they kill two other birds with one stone, and that stone being unnecessary and wasteful expansion.  Sure, Walmart is a "big-box store" with a footprint of about 200,000 square feet, but its smaller kissing cousin Walgreens may not have the same size, but it shares the same heartbeat.  It's the "I know I'm the biggest retail chain in my category, but I will still steamroll the competition and the environment to become even bigger" mantra.  It's disturbing and disgusting.  Dr. Evil's got nothing on these guys.

Anyway, I haven't purchased anything from Walmart in over four years, and I do not plan to buy anything from Walgreens in the near future.   How about you?  Let's band together to stop Walgreens from taking over the world!

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[Leroy Jacobs]

DON'T SHOP AT WALGREENS!!