“
Meanwhile, the chain cut back on a lot of what might have helped deter shoplifting. Lee Scott, Walmart’s chairman from 2000 to 2009—the years when the opiate addiction crisis was gathering force—came in to boost profits by cutting costs. Workers already weren’t paid a lot. Under Scott, Walmart stores cut staff on the floor and greeters at the entrances, all of which deterred crime. It seemed to me that their store design already encouraged shoplifting, with dimmer lights compared to other stores, no videos in restrooms or at blind corners. With automatic cashiers at the exits, shoppers could spend an entire outing at Walmart and not see an employee. In a good many towns, Walmart was the only store. In others, it was one of the few, coexisting with a supermarket, maybe a Big Lots or a JCPenney. Either way, I found, no chain had a reputation among drug users for being easier to rip off than Walmart. I heard this over and over. They avoided Target because of its wider aisles and brighter lights. Whatever the dealers wanted in exchange for their dope was usually available at Walmart. The chain offered an easy shopping experience—and an easy shoplifting experience, as well. “It was convenient,” said Monica Tucker, who runs a drug rehab center in eastern Tennessee but was a meth addict for seven years, and supported her habit at Walmart. “Anything you were requested to get [by the dealer], you could find it there. We stole lots of food. We weren’t eating because we were on meth, but everybody else was hungry at the dope dealer’s house.” With opioids, then later with meth, plentiful drug supply was paired with this easy source of goods to barter. Had there been the same vibrant Main Streets, ecosystems of the locally owned stores that were the lifeblood of many owners who lived in town and returned their profits to it, both the opioid crisis and the meth problem might have spread less quickly in many parts of the country.
”
”
Sam Quinones (The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth)