Talk:Tag:shop=chemist

Definitions associated with 'Chemist'

UK

• Chemist: A person or specialist in chemistry.
• Chemist's shop: A place where a chemist sells chemical compounds and can advise customers on the use of such chemicals sold. Such premises are mapped as 'shop=chemist'
• Pharmacy: A place or specialist counter where medicinal chemical compounds can be obtained for any animal*. Usually, shop=chemist contains a pharmacy.
• Dispensary: A place or specialist counter where prescription drugs are dispensed. Usually, pharmacies are dispensing.

• Head Shop: A shop selling drugs (e.g. 'legal highs'), drug paraphernalia and associated stuff.

* Some UK pharmacies sell domestic pet care chemical treatments.

US

• Drugstore:
• pharmacy:
• Dispensing:

NSI Presets

Currently, the Name Suggestion Index tags US chains like Walgreens and CVS with this shop=chemist. Despite this, the wiki says that US drugstores should be tagged with amenity=pharmacy. So which one should be used? TheAdventurer64 (talk) 22:29, 21 July 2022 (UTC)

"Drugstores"

(Sorry for polluting the edit history with moving this comment around)

Speaking as an American, I think that anybody here who hears the word "chemist" thinks of a scientist or engineer in the field of chemistry, and only that. A "chemist shop" sounds like a supply store for such a scientist.

This article says that to Americans, "drugstore" refers to a pharmacy. Meanwhile the ID editor has the description "drugstore" for the chemist "feature type". I would suggest a "drugstore" is the _combination_ of these things. I.e., it's shop=chemist + amenity=pharmacy.

In the US, the word "pharmacy" works fine for pharmacies not attached to "drugstores". But is there anything like a "chemist", i.e. a "drugstore" without a pharmacy? I wish I could suggest that apps display "chemist" as "drugstore" for us poor confused Americans. But if we were to visit the U.K. it sounds like we'd run into occasional "drugstores" that don't have a pharmacy.

I'm not sure what to do here, but it seems there's an annoying problem worth discussing! Maybe the solution would be for Americans to see "Drug store" if it's chemist+pharmacy, and "Convenience store" (closest match) otherwise? (which would be annoying logic to add for app developers)