Quote:
CVS Caremark pharmacies will phase out tobacco in U.S. retail stores by Oct. 1, a move swiftly embraced by President Barack Obama and the first lady on Wednesday as a step that would save lives and promote good health.The chain will lose about $2 billion in revenues annually from sales of tobacco in its 7,600 stores, but CVS Pharmacy president Helena Foulkes said it just makes sense for a firm now positioning itself as a health care company not to sell cigarettes side-by-side with medicine.
President Barack Obama, a former smoker who tried for years to stop, immediately praised CVS, saying in a statement that their powerful example "will help advance my Administration's efforts to reduce tobacco-related deaths, cancer, and heart disease, as well as bring down health care costs ultimately saving lives and protecting untold numbers of families from pain and heartbreak for years to come."
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The move is also an effort to help curb tobacco-related illness and the 480,000 deaths caused by smoking each year in the U.S. Despite huge reductions over the past 50 years, about 18 percent of Americans 42 million people still smoke, health officials say. Smoking costs the nation about $289 billion annually in direct medical costs and lost productivity, according to federal figures.
Health experts and groups like the American Pharmacists Association and the American Medical Association have urged stores that house pharmacies to stop selling tobacco for years. Many small, independent pharmacies and small private chains already ban tobacco, said John Norton, spokesman for the National Community Pharmacists Association.Target stores stopped selling tobacco products in 1996.
But CVS is the first large retail pharmacy chain to do so.
I always thought it was weird pharmacies sold tobacco products since they were about medication and stuff.
Any thoughts?