Imagine Main Street with a real bakery, a news store, a pharmacy. Ten years ago Wellfleet did have a news store and a pharmacy in the buildings above. Today’s Cape Cod Times brings word that the owner of the last drugstore on the Outer Cape has seen fit to stop carrying drugs, switching its prescriptions to the Stop & Shop on Shank Painter Road. This is very sad news. When we still had a pharmacy in Wellfleet, service was prompt and shopping there was convenient. If a child got sick in summer, parents did not have to fight traffic to obtain necessary medication. Ever since the Main Street space became part of Wellfleet Marketplace, Wellfleetians have been obliged to travel for drugs, increasing the number of cars on Route 6 and adding pollution to the air, not to mention the time wasted for sick tourists and town's folk alike. When the Wellfleet Pharmacy closed its doors, everyone involved claimed service in Orleans would be just as good. That turned out to be quite an exaggeration. I quickly gave up on the Stop & Shop drugstore and switched to CVS, which has not proved much better. As I stand in line at the drug counter, my thoughts often drift to better days, when I could walk into town to pick up a prescription. What about all the elderly folks in Provincetown who walked to the center of town for their drugs? How are they supposed to manage buying online? Must they now trek over to Shank Painter Road? The only glimmer of hope I see in news of the Adams Pharmacy’s demise is the fact that the lack of a real pharmacy on the Outer Cape may perhaps spur Wellfleet to include one in its plan for a Care Campus ...
