When I was a lad, the kind people at the drug store always tried to keep me healthy, saying things like “Use this cream for that rash.”

No longer!

Duane Reade, in an all-out push to make drug stores more friendly to the young and naïve, is now encouraging people to play beer pong and then — as Will Smith might say — get jiggy with it. How are they doing this? Very (un)subtly. In the Duane Reade on 75th Street and Columbus Avenue, the store has placed ping pong balls on a hanging rack right in front of the beer. And on the other side of the ping pong balls are…condoms!

Beer pong, for the uninitiated, is a game wherein players stand on either side of  a table and attempt to throw a ping pong ball in the beer-filled cup of the opposing player, at which time that player has to drink the beer in the cup. There is no way to play beer pong without binge drinking. Or, scratch that, there is no way to play it right without binge drinking.

But…but…but maybe there’s a more innocent explanation for the display design. I believe there is not.

Photos by Avi.