More Pressure for the Cold Sufferer

I have come to Sweden from the land of consumerism, the United States, where no hour of the day is safe from the opportunity to sell something. I have always wondered what kind of desire there must be to go to your local mega store and buy a lawn mower at three in the morning. The mega store will retort that there are swing shift and graveyard workers that need to buy lawn mowers, too. That says a lot about the fact that there are people besides our public safety employees who work at those hours. Most of those late night shoppers work at all night mega stores as our factory workers, who used to work the graveyard shift, now watch as those shifts are being taken over by Chinese companies. But I digress.

I have gotten used to the absolutely civilized act of stores that close at 6 pm every day and are closed on Sunday. Believe me, it doesn’t take long to get used to that aspect of commercialism. But just as I have gotten used to the fact that there are stores that sell one thing well, and not many stores that sell everything not well, along comes the EU to spoil everything.

For those of you who have entered one of those mega drug stores or even your local super market in the United States, you have probably been overwhelmed with the variety of products available to sufferers of, say, the common cold. The infinite ways to end the suffering of this winter malady is absolutely amazing. Not that they cure the bug, heavens we wouldn’t want to kill this cash cow of just easing the symptoms caused by a cold. How many times have you just stood, transfixed at this monument of redundancy for curing ailments that last, on average, about five days to varying degree of suffering. You still will have the runny nose, fever, sore throat and aches of the cold; you just won’t feel them as bad. Ahhh, capitalism, why cure the cold when we can get rich on not curing it. Grandma’s remedy of chicken soup, Vicks Vap-o-Rub and a box of Kleenex still would work just as well.

Swedes have not had that confusion problem because the way their system has run and worked very- well- thank- you for the last three decades. You go to the doctor, he says you have a cold and then you go to the drug store for your prescription. Or, the more savvy, go to the drugstore and get an over the counter remedy. For the last 35 years, the drug store has been Apoteket, the only game in town. Swedes do not get confused about what to buy, because for the last two generations they have just allowed this drug store monopoly to make their choice. When the person (mostly female) says here you go, take this, unconfused Swedes go home and start the remedy. No need to wonder or worry whether the right choice has been made. No endless rows of choices to fret over. Just go home and get better. How civil! But now, the European Union, that bastion of free trade says that the Swedish system is unfair and “other” players in the drug plying trade must be allowed in.

The European Union is this loose economic organization, made up of European countries that are supposedly linked together to form an entity big enough to compete with the Asian and American economic juggernauts. That the EU is basically like your dining room at Christmas, full of squabbling relatives and siblings is beside the point. When the EU speaks, Ministers of Economy and Trade are supposed to tremble. Running the EU must be akin to herding chickens.

I’m sure the idea of opening markets in a country is a good idea. In fact, I have read that there are current Apoteket employees who look forward to the loosening of the Apoteket strangle hold so they will be able to run their own operations. If that were going to be the result, that smaller owners could run their small business that would be a boon. But the reality, I’m afraid, will be that ICA and Coop will expand their over the counter drug business and that big foreign chains will enter the Swedish market. Those small guys with the dreams will have reality set in soon enough.

And the pretense of lower pricing to we, the consumer, will trumpeted, but the difference will be minimal to our purses, I’m afraid. Plus the fact that like our American fellow cold sufferers, we will be faced with the dilemma of having to choose from a myriad of remedies that are really not that effective. Which means that we have to add to the sneezes and sniffles the pressure of choosing the right box of pills for us. By 10 pm at the latest.