SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES

I went into a chemist on 5th avenue an hour after arriving in Manhattan. It looked spookily familiar - it could have been Superdrug. The lay out was similar and the brands the same: pampers, colgate, ultrabright, snickers, mars bars, Rimmel, Max Factor etc etc you name it. There were fridges along the walls with cold drinks and packaged sandwiches, cosmetics, off-the-shelf painkillers and toiletries in the middle. The one odd distinguishing feature though was at the checkout: cigarettes - this looked really incongruous to me as a Scottish person, where basically smoking has been banned everywhere but in your own house or outdoors because of health implications - a chemist/tobbacconist combined - weird!