If you've driven through any American town or suburb lately, chances are you've noticed a vacant Walgreens. Or a shuttered CVS. Or a boarded-up Rite Aid. These aren't isolated closures. This is a structural, sector-wide contraction that is reshaping the retail landscape in ways we haven't seen before.

Here's the scale of what's happened. Walgreens has closed 1,200 stores over the past three years. CVS has shuttered more than 1,170 locations since 2022. And Rite Aid — a 63-year-old chain that once operated nearly 2,400 stores — went through bankruptcy twice and closed its last location in late 2025. It's gone. Entirely. In total, roughly 7,000 pharmacies across the country have closed since 2022. One in three pharmacies that existed in 2010 no longer exists today. Nearly 50 million Americans now live in what researchers are calling a pharmacy desert.

So what does the industry say to do with them?

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