Posted on 02/22/2017 8:23:16 AM PST by fruser1
"When we removed tobacco from our shelves, a significant number of our customers simply stopped buying and hopefully smoking cigarettes altogether instead of just altering their cigarette purchasing habits," said Troyen A. Brennan, M.D., chief medical officer of CVS Health and an author of the study. "This research proves that our decision had a powerful public health impact by disrupting access to cigarettes and helping more of our customers on their path to better health.
While cigarette purchases were reduced across all retail settings after CVS’s decision, those who purchased cigarettes exclusively at CVS Pharmacy were 38% more likely to stop buying cigarettes, according to the study. Those who purchased three or more packs per month were more than twice as likely to stop buying cigarettes altogether. CVS paid for and wrote the study, and the journal article was peer-reviewed before publication.
Forbes reports that removing tobacco products from CVS’s 7,600 stores resulted in loss of $2 billion in annual sales that existed when it sold cigarettes. Since the chain’s 2014 decision, other drugstores haven’t followed suit. Walgreens, for example, says it’s placing more emphasis on smoking cessation programs, despite scrutiny from shareholders to follow CVS’s lead as a health-care-related provider and remove tobacco sales from its stores.
According to the NACS State of the Industry Report, more trips to convenience stores as well as CVS divesting its tobacco business helped cigarettes shift to positive sales growth of 3.4% in 2015. Cigarettes remain a top sales dollar generator inside the store.
(Excerpt) Read more at nacsonline.com ...
CVS believes smokers quit but it appears cig sales were up in convenience stores significantly.
Complete malarky. Smokers are addicted to nicotine and when CVS stopped selling cigarettes, they went somewhere else; they didn’t quit.
CVS is a self-serving, pompous, lib oriented, do-gooder institution.
Oh wait, they did.
Smokers trying to quit or ex-smokers trying to stay clean might appreciate CVS as a “Lead me not unto temptation” drugstore. There are ethical dimensions to a lot of things.
If I ran a place and had to choose, I might keep alcohol but wouldn’t carry the smokes. I think habitual smoking is a sign of dysfunction in a society, as are other addictions. I know one, and heard of others, who smoked occasionally but could take or leave it.
7-11 got my business. Better prices even. I think they use cigarettes as a loss leader.
I hope government funding wasn’t involved in this study.
First, the idea that CVS Health was selling cigarettes in the first place is kind of amusing. Second, their statement is marketing BS. Just stop selling the cigarettes if you don’t want to sell them. Save the preaching for Sunday morning.
Really ..?? They didn’t consider that the “smokers” just went down the street and purchased their cigarettes some other place ..??????????
As a former smoker, I can tell you that I, for sure, would have gone down the street.
The problem is .. what else did these people purchase while they were at the CVS ..?? Items that they will now possibly purchase somewhere else too.
In my town there is a gas station right next to the CVS. There is a cigarette store a supermarket and a liquor store right across the street. Another liquor store is diagonally across the intersection. If CVS doesn’t sell cigarettes it is easier to get them at one of five other places than it is to quit. If cigarette smoking went down, and it probably did, it was because of the coincidence of e-cigarettes and vaping taking a segment of the market.
HAHAHAHA!
(cough, cough)
HAHAHAHA!
I've seen stats that suggest that around 15% of Americans smoke and that the large majority of smokers are of lower socio-economic status.
Having seen the devestation that cigarettes caused my parents (lung cancer and a long,lingering death due to COPD) deciding not to smoke was one of the few truly smart decisions I've ever made.
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How many customers took their wallets to Walgreens for everything they used to buy at CVS?
Whoa, that's some science, right there. Instead of 1000 places around town to buy a pack of smokes, now there's 998.
So much harder to get cigarettes now that they've done that.
I was a smoker in the middle of all of that. I have now quit, because I have some very serious health issues now, I kind of don't have a choice. Needing a pack of smokes used to bring me into CVS, where I'd remember a bunch of other little things that I needed. Now I don't really go there at all. Not boycotting them or anything, I just don't need to go there anymore.
Good grief.
Hopefully, this clown is a corporate suit who doesn’t have a practice on the side.
When we removed tobacco from our shelves, a significant number of our customers simply stopped buying and hopefully smoking cigarettes altogether
= = =
OK
Stop selling condoms, beer, and other troublesome items. CVS can single handedly cure society.
Then stop selling medicine. Disease will stop.
You can see where this is headed.
Shutter the CVS store. All the evils of society will be cured.
You know where all this is headed.
At some point, the government(s) of the several states will regulate the sales of tobacco in government owned stores like a lot of them do hard liquor............guaranteed revenue stream................
They should immediately stop selling Preparation H.....................
I recall the story from a while back that CVS wants to cash in on Obamacare by becoming preliminary care clinics or some such, and tobacco is somehow against the relevant regs.
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