St. Louis residents can now find a morning-after pill on convenience store shelves next to the condoms.
California-based Cadence OTC began selling its over-the-counter emergency contraceptives, The Morning After Pill, in convenience stores and gas stations in Missouri this year. Its products are available in 24 locations statewide and 30 in the St. Louis area including Illinois.
“Those convenience stores and gas stations tend to be in regular neighborhoods. They're open later. They're community bound,” said Kate Voyten, vice president of commercial operations at Cadence OTC. “So we were looking for a place to offer a solution that wasn't available today.”
It costs $25 in store and $19.95 online. It contains levonorgestrel, which is not an abortion pill. It needs to be taken 72 hours after sex to work, but the company says the sooner the more effective.
Voyten said it can be found next to the condoms in most locations. Some locations might have a card to bring to the cashier, who will give it to the customer at the counter.
“Fun fact is that about a third of all condoms are sold in convenience stores,” Voyten said. “And so our goal was to say, well, if this contraceptive is sold here, let's make sure that the emergency contraceptive is available as well.”
Emergency contraception has been available over the counter for years, but in health care or contraceptive deserts, there often aren’t any retailers that sell it within a five-mile radius, Voyten said. Even at locations that do sell it, customers may have to go up to the pharmacy counter to purchase it.
“I think it is helpful to decrease some of those additional barriers that are still there,” said Melissa Tepe, an OBGYN who is Affinia Healthcare’s chief medical officer.
Affinia is not involved with Cadence OTC.
Cadence OTC plans to eventually sell birth control pills over the counter in convenience stores as well. Voyten said the company is “at the tail end” of the process, and it is working with the Food and Drug Administration to finish its final study.
Cadence OTC’s main partners are 7-Eleven and Circle K, but it works with many other stores. Some of the St. Louis locations that offer the product are the 7-Elevens on Southwest Avenue and Mackenzie Road. The company’s website has a store finder that shows the locations closest to a certain ZIP code.
Tepe said emergency contraception is safe, and she supports increased access to it.
“Any type of safe access that people can have for their reproductive health care needs, as long as it’s safe, is a positive thing,” Tepe said.
This story has been updated.
