People’s Drug Store, the historic pharmacy in downtown Vicksburg, will be closing this year after 103 years in business.

Wendy Trevilion has been the owner of the store since 2017.

“I’m devastated. It’s Something I never thought would happen and I fought really hard to prevent it and I just, I can’t do it anymore,” she said. “Money’s not coming in quick enough and it’s going out too quick and we can’t keep going and it’s very sad.”

Trevilion said the major cause for the lack of income is low reimbursement from insurance companies and, in particular, Medicare.

“The majority of our clientele is low-income, Medicare and Medicaid, where their medicines are on Medicare Part D plans. And these plans have been able to get away with making independent stores have contracts that are unreasonable,” Trevilion said. “When we submit a claim for a 30-day supply of medication, we might get 15 cents, 87 cents. That’s not enough to cover the cost of filling a prescription. That barely even covers the cost of the actual pills.”

Trevilion said that the math doesn’t add up.

“You have to put pills in a bottle, you have to put a label on it, you have to ring it up on a POS system which has a monthly fee, it has to be filled on a prescription system which has a monthly fee and it has to be put in a bag,” she said. “You have to have the patient sign for it… that all has a fee. And then we’re supposed to do all this for 15 cents? The bottle and the label and the bag itself is 42 cents in my store. That’s how much it cost me for an empty bottle…that’s why we’re going out of business.”

Trevilion said bills are sometimes presented to Congress to help alleviate the situation for independent pharmacies, but they never see the light of day.

“They’re just washed under the table,” she said. “They’re pushed back because it doesn’t matter (to them), because they don’t feel it. So they don’t know.”

The drugstore has been in its current location since the 1950s. Trevilion said she wants customers to have one last chance to fill prescriptions and to have their records sent to another pharmacy of their choice.

“We’re seriously going to miss all of our customers. They’re not just a number. They are family here. It has been an emotional week with many tears from both sides,” Trevillion said. “It’s very heart-touching to know how appreciated we are and how much we’re going to be missed. And I have so much gratitude for all of them.”

Another thing that Vicksburg will be missing after the store’s closure, according to Trevilion, is a pharmacy that is readily available to Riverboat tourists. The final day of business for the People’s Drug Store is Dec. 6.

“It’s just really sad that this had to happen. This is not what I wanted. And I just hope that everybody continues to support independent pharmacies and that the lawmakers get out there and support us, because this is a community.”