This ain’t no CVS
The French Pharmacy is having its moment
Paris tourists, encouraged by dozens of TikTok and Instagram influencers, have been descending upon French drugstores and using social media to document their “French Pharmacy Haul” with online videos. They excitedly tap their pointy fingernails on every bottle, jar and tube of French skin care products, gushing about how much better and cheaper they are than what they can get in the US.
Though they’re years away from encountering their first droopy eyelid or turkey waddle, these young women spend hundreds of Euros to snatch up intense treatments that have earned cult-like status. Products like Embryolisse Lait Crème Concentré, Caudalie Masque Instant Detox, Nuxe Huile Prodigieuse, and even a burn cream called Biafine. These impressionable shoppers may have been hoodwinked into covering their unburned faces with a 13€-a-tube burn cream, but they got one thing right:
French pharmacies are a treasure, and not just because of the skin care products.
Pharmacies in France, easily recognized by the green neon cross above the door, are privately-owned businesses, not large chains, run by highly-trained medical professionals. They offer medical advice, help diagnose your illness, provide free vaccinations, test for some infections and prescribe antibiotics to treat them. They also dispense prescription and over-the-counter drugs. (Actually, medications that are easily accessible in the US, like Tylenol and Advil, are kept behind the counter here and come in smaller quantities than those huge tubs you can get at RiteAid.) French pharmacies also give outstanding advice on which facial cleanser will be best for your very dry but sensitive skin.
While you can pick up essential oils and homeopathic remedies for just about any ailment, you will not find M&Ms, beach towels, greeting cards, Halloween costumes or spaghetti sauce for sale in French pharmacies. The only other non-medical products they offer are things like vitamins, ankle braces, bandages and reading glasses.
For the Instagram pharmacy ladies, Mecca is CityPharma. It is a large discount parapharmacy in Paris’ 6th Arrondissement. (Parapharmacies do not not fill prescriptions or give vaccines). CityPharma is much larger than most French pharmacies, but many of the products it stocks are available in neighborhood pharmacies all over France, including mine. The products I’ve bought here in Rennes have been lovely, though not miraculous. (I still have those tell-tale brown age spots on my face, dammit.)
What impresses me most is the sunscreen. Crème solaire is much more effective in France than in the US because the European Union regulates it as a cosmetic, not as the drug it is considered in the U.S. Consequently, the EU has approved more than twice as many UV filters as sunscreen ingredients, giving manufacturers freedom to improve its power and quality. French sunscreen manages to block more dangerous rays while still feeling silky and light, unlike the thick gunk I used to buy at the Jersey shore.
Skin-care products in the EU also benefit from what they can’t put in them.
What all the hype around French pharmacies ignores is its most endearing and rewarding aspect: It creates and nurtures a personal relationship between neighborhood pharmacist and patient. That means, if you want professional advice on which skin care products you should be using, you can just ask the pharmacist instead of the Instagram lady.
Pharmacists here are a crucial member of your health-care team. They are the first-line of defense and information for non-emergency health care. They seek to get to know you, your medications, your health, your needs. All my necessary medical information is available online to me and my medical professionals. The pharmacist just inserts my health card into a reader and the little chip in my health card tells her what medications I take, what vaccines I’ve had, what allergies I have and who my doctor is.
For most minor ailments, I visit the pharmacist before calling the doctor. I tell her my symptoms and she offers ways to heal or reduce them. She’ll tell me when I need to see my doctor. Some pharmacies will even get an online doctor to diagnose and provide a prescription.
Although pharmacies, like many other French stores, are closed on Sundays, there's always a nearby pharmacie de garde: a drugstore that stays open in case of emergencies.
Here in France I have been directed to homeopathic remedies for energy, sleep and motion sickness that actually work, a skin cleanser that doesn’t dry my skin, and the richest moisturizers I have ever used. I’ve also received valuable advice and a few magnificent Covid and flu vaccines. One pharmacist even taught me how to clean the wound and apply Steri-strips the time Don nearly lopped off the tip of his finger while slicing a bagel.
Contrast that with one of my last encounters at a CVS. I queued up at the “consultation” area to ask about a side effect of the new medication I was taking. The pharmacist simply replied, “I don’t know,” and walked away.
I am an obsessive consumer of skincare, but CityPharma has become the embodiment of the old remark (Groucho Marx? Casey Stengel?), "It's too crowded, nobody goes there anymore." And it's absolutely correct that you can get most of what they sell in a neighborhood pharmacy (or in Paris in the Pharmacie Les Halles or La Défense) or even Monoprix. But let's not tell the skincare girlies or they will ruin those stores too...
It's really interesting to read about the differences in pharmacies between the U.S. and France. As a person who is highly allergic to methylisothiazolinone and methylchloroisothiazolinone, I appreciate that the EU banned those substances - yet, the U.S. allows them in many products, from shampoos to skin care products along with lotions, cleaning products, and more.