CVS to Stop Selling Tobacco Products!

When you think of a Pharmacy, what is the first thing you think of? Maybe prescription drugs, beauty products, health to name a few. But what about cigarettes? Is this something you think should be in a pharmacy? CVS Caremark, doesn't think cigarettes should be sold by a company that advocates health and wellness.

CVS announced that starting Oct. 1st they will no longer be selling these products in their stores. That includes cigars, cigarettes and any other tobacco product that goes in that category. By eliminating these products CVS will be giving up a big chunk of money, at least 2 billion dollars. “Every day, 26,000 of our pharmacists and nurse practitioners are on the front-line of healthcare,” CVS Pharmacy President Helena Foulkes said. “They’re working with our patients and our customers who have chronic conditions like high blood pressure and high cholesterol and diabetes. We know that smoking is extremely antithetical to helping people with their healthcare needs. So, it’s the right thing to do, and it’s also underscoring our position as a healthcare player.” Though, CVS maybe losing a lot of money by discontinuing tobacco products, they are making room to take on a changing health care scene. CVS will be hiring clinicians to offer care onsite, keeping the community healthy; selling tobacco products would prove to be a conflict of interest and cause people to question their creditability as a provider of healthcare. “It’s very important to us, as we’re working with doctors and hospital systems and health plans, that they see us as an extension of their services,” Foulkes said. “So it’s virtually impossible to be in the tobacco business when you want to be a partner in the health care system” Though, CVS will reduce the number of retailers that sell tobacco products by about 7,600 between now and October 1st, experts believe that this will not stop smokers from buying tobacco elsewhere. This big change will put on the pressure for other retailers that sell the product to follow their example. The more the retailers join in the fight the less places people can buy the product encouraging the abandonment of tobacco all together. Not only will this make smoking inconvenient but change social attitudes about smoking making it unacceptable. As CVS Medical director Troy Brennan and UCSF tobacco researcher Steven Schroeder write in a medical journal commentary released in tandem with the announcement, “Making cigarettes available in pharmacies in essence ‘renormalizes’ the product by sending the subtle message that it cannot be all that unhealthy if it is available for purchase where medicines are sold.” Pharmacist and the American Heart Association have long opposed selling tobacco in pharmacies and California has stopped it all together. “If other retailers follow this lead, tobacco products will become much more difficult to obtain,” Brennan and Schroeder write. “Moreover, if people understand that retail outlets that plan to promote health, provide pharmacy services, and house retail clinics are no longer going to sell tobacco products, the social unacceptability of tobacco use will be substantially reinforced… . If pharmacies do not make this effort voluntarily, federal or state regulatory action would be appropriate.”

Thanks CVS for helping the rest of us breathe a little easier

By:Shantescia Hill