CVS to stop selling cigarettes:
CVS, the nation’s second-largest pharmacy chain, said Wednesday that it would stop selling all cigarettes and tobacco products nationwide by October, saying they have no place in a drugstore company that is trying to become more of a health-care provider….”Cigarettes have no place in an environment where health care is being delivered,” said Mr. Merlo, a 58-year-old former pharmacist who became CEO of CVS Caremark in 2011. “This is the right decision at the right time as we evolve from a drugstore into a health-care company.”…”It just doesn’t make sense, if you exist to promote health and you sell one of the major causes of death in the U.S.,” said Otis Brawley, chief medical officer at the American Cancer Society.
Now first up, this is a private company, and I applaud them in taking this stand. Further I will agree with them, smoking is very dangerous, and it causes approximately 440,000 deaths and lots of expensive issues. Still Diabetes and Obesity kill more people, and CVS still sells sweets and junk food.
Again I’m fine with them pulling the smokes, but where does it stop?
I suspect there’s a financial angle there trying to be gussied up with health consciousness.
Sounds like being a smoke-free shop will help them get their independent clinics in easier…and we know with Obamacare those things will be SOLID gold until that shit show is repealed.
Someone on another blog pointed out that its likely just a matter of time before the anti-smoking industry goes after retailers who sell them, so this may be a pre-emption of that. Plus it may actually lower their insurance rates…..both of which wouldn’t surprise me one bit.
I don’t personally care, not sure there’s even a CVS near me, and the only Walgreens remotely close is very out of my way and I think I’ve shopped there twice…..
Time will tell. I think the most likely (besides the clinic thing mentioned above) would be maybe against pharmacies slinging butts. I think it would be a tough row to hoe getting gas stations and convenience stores to quit the smokes.
Still I’ll be patronizing CVS later today.
Where does it stop? It doesn’t, until enough people rise up and say “No!”. Like C. S. Lewis reminded us, the nannies have the support of their conscience, so they’ll always find something to fix for us.
I’ve been hearing that CVS’s long-term angle is that they’re trying to team up with physicians and have practicing offices embedded in many of their locations. Small practices, to be sure – simple check-ups and referrals and such – but practices nonetheless. It’s reasonable to expect that a doctor’s office is a non-tobacco-use area, so this move may be a step to facilitate that.
I think that’s the real story.
Also since smoking has gone way down in the last 30 years, and now with E-cigarettes taking another huge chunk out of the traditional tobacco market, it isn’t necessarily as big a market loss as projected.