Pills are removed from their original packaging and sold loose at the medicine stalls. (Credit: Ayushee Roy)
Colorful pills and bottles are piled on rows of little collapsible tables around the 181st Street subway station of Manhattan. The vendors who man the medicine stalls of Little Dominican Republic sit on deck chairs from morning to nightfall, luring passersby to stop and check out their goods.
But take a closer look and many of the products turn out to be potentially harmful or outright banned.
“I won’t buy from them, they’re very dangerous,” said resident Ana Duran, who walked by quickly with her grandson. “I don’t know where this stuff comes from, and if something goes wrong, who can I go to?”
Some products, like Aleve, a painkiller, and Omeprazole, which treats acid reflux, are readily available over-the-counter medications that also for sale at local pharmacies. Others, like Niacin, or vitamin B3, and Voltaren, which aims to treat joint pain, are approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration but pose great cardiovascular risks if not consumed appropriately and in the right quantities. The vendors also keep a healthy stock of rat poison in pellet form, the sale of which is banned by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
“People buying these products are at risk of ingesting something that could be very harmful for them, especially with no government oversight or supervision from someone like a pharmacist who could advise on the proper dosage,” said Gregory Karelas, a lecturer at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, who specializes in health policy and management.
Medicine vendors lined up along 181st Street. (Credit: Ayushee Roy)
The NYPD has recently been cracking down on all types of vendors along the main 181st Street drag, confiscating goods, causing medicine hawkers to lose business as they lay low. “They find out when police coming, and take all their things away first,” said Archana Patel, who said she’s run a pharmacy with her brother on 181st street for 23 years.
Jose, who asked for anonymity because he feared police interactions, has been managing his medicine stall for over two decades here. “Police come all over the neighborhood now, everywhere,” he said, shaking his head at the thinning crowd on the sidewalk. He has started to stock loose packets of spices like cinnamon and cardamom along with his usual fare, as he tries to get different customers.
A recent bill, sponsored by State Sen. Jessica Ramos, a progressive from Queens who’s one of four people to enter the race against Mayor Eric Adams in next year’s Democratic primary, seeks to legalize street vending across the state of New York. Currently under state senate committee review, this bill could lead to an increase in the total number of hawkers in the area, but might pose a threat to the medicine stalls.
“A lot of political discourse about street vending has currently become wrapped up with crime, so there’s less people to support that bill now than there would’ve been say three years ago,” said Ryan Devlin, who examines city planning and street vending at Temple University. “If it were passed, vendors would still be subject to rules around what they sell, and the sale of things like liquor or medicine would still have to be regulated separately.”
A tower of Sniper Insecticide is displayed at at Jose’s stall. (Credit: Ayushee Roy)
The piece de resistance of Jose’s medicine stall on 181st Street is a towering column of bottles with the unmistakable bright yellow Sniper label. But the sale of Sniper in the United States is a direct violation of the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), and its import is prohibited by the EPA. Though its intended usage is as an insecticide, Sniper has raised red flags internationally for frequent misuse.
In Nigeria, Sniper has become popular as a suicide-aide among young people, causing the country’s National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) to ban it from all supermarkets in 2019. This year, between February and July alone, four out of the seven university students who committed suicide had done so by ingesting Sniper.
Here in Little Dominican Republic, shoppers keep buying it out of convenience.
“Their concern is how soon you can get the product,” said Sunny Patel, manager at Heidi Pharmacy, which is located down the road from the vendors. “They just google symptoms and buy from the stalls. But this is dangerous, not right to just trust Google blindly.”
However, according to Jean Bae, a professor at NYU’s School of Global Public Health, the stalls are a long-standing symbol of the neighborhood’s mixed cultural heritage.
“It’s not just that immigrants are using these stalls because they are ignorant, but because there is also a language barrier and cultural aspect as well,” Bae said. “They are sometimes not comfortable with the way medicine is practiced here, which is seen to be quite common among certain ethnic groups. So [they] prefer to buy a homeopathic or familiar product from a subway station by their commute.”
“Most products are from their countries,” said Vanessa Perez, who works at an optical store that’s surrounded by medicine stalls. “So [it’s] easier to get [it] from here than traveling back or asking someone to bring from home.”
The vendors do sell many products with foreign appeal that are not always available at local pharmacies, including Aboniki balm from Nigeria, which relieves pain, and Dolo-Dobendan, which is popularly used in the Dominican Republic to treat sore throat.
“I sometimes come here and find a lot of cheap things,” said Annoryz Pichardo, a middle-aged shopper who grew up in Little Dominican Republic. “My favorite is the Sniper, I use it to kill cockroaches and they don’t sell it at the pharmacy.”
About the author(s)
Ayushee Roy is a part-time poet and full-time journalist, deeply passionate about creating diversity in thought and circumstance in the newsroom.