Reply #43: I once had a part-time job

[Totally Committed]

where one of my jobs was to interview people when they came in for a job, and refer them up to management if I felt they were "hireable". One night, I came in to find that a new responsibility had been added: to administer a drug test to everyone who came in and applied. I was to cut a hair sample even before they sat down for their first question. I refused to do it on ethical grounds. I felt that having a drug test before you could even apply for a job, in a job where it couldn't possibly matter if you were high or not, was wrong. Ethically and morally, wrong. I was told it was part of my job and I had a decision to make. (Actually, I disagreed with the test altogether, but...)

I decided that if that was part of my job, and I was morally and ethically oppsed to this aspect of it, I needed to compromise my principles and just do it, or I could be true to my beliefs and leave. I told my supervisor I was leaving. I quit my job on principle.

That's what these Pharmacists need to do. They need to do their jobs, jobs they knew involved dispensing drugs they may or may not agree with morally or ethically (if they had the intelligence to become Pharmacists, they had the intelligence to comprehend the scope of that position) or they need to leave. They need to go and do something else for a living. No employer should have to pay someone to do half their job. And we, as consumers, should be able to walk into any "full-service" pharmacy, and get a prescription written out by a liscenced physician filled without question. And, on the spot.