But if you happened to be a Junee councillor, senior staff member or family of either, you’d have to drive more than 40km to Wagga to buy your new asthma puffer.

Plastered in the front window of Junee’s only chemist on Monday morning was a sign extraordinary in its pettiness.

“Due to the inaction of Junee Shire Council and its staff, as of Monday the 22^nd of May 2017 all councillors, executive staff and their families will not be permitted to enter the premises known as Junee Capital Chemist and all credit will be suspended until further notice,” it read.

The response on social media and in the community was predictably swift and savage.

One resident likened the ban to “something out of North Korea” while others branded the decision “disgraceful”.

After media pressure and an apparent intervention by council, the chemist’s owners were forced into an embarrassing backdown.

But the PR plane had already crash-landed.

Such is the wildfire nature of social media, the chemist’s bizarre exclusion policy had already spread around town.

That any business could see fit to punish employees (and even relatives of employees) of an organisation it had a gripe with is hard to fathom. That the only chemist in a small town could do it is staggering.

What would the chemist do if the mother of a baby, or an elderly resident related to a councillor, turned up desperate for medication?

Chemists have an ethical obligation to allow residents access to critical medicines.

There is no social legitimacy in using access to medicine as some sort of crude bargaining chip to settle a score with a local council.

Of course, businesses have autonomy and as such, a right to serve whoever they see fit. But ultimately, those businesses only exist at the behest of their customers.

And if those customers are treated with disdain, as many were in this instance, they have a right to take their business elsewhere.

With a cut-price Chemist Warehouse set to open 25 minutes down the road in Boorooma and online chemists becoming more popular by the day, Junee Capital Chemist could be about to learn a very expensive lesson.