In the long run I think it will prove to be a good strategy as stocking cigarettes are labor intensive, and low margin items...
I also think it makes a statement they are willing to take a hit on the bottom line for the health of their customers.
As for the "freedom of choice" aspect of it, what a company does or doesn't do is completely up to them and for the marketplace to balance out...
Where "freedom of choice" is an issue and really the only issue is when government dictates what you can and can not sell...
CVS isn't the government...
"CVS isn't the government..."
On the other hand, let's not make believe CVS operates like a private small business in the free market. Or General Electric. Or AARP. Or ...
These outfits lobby, get subsidies, tax breaks, make donations, they politic and in the case of CVS have a huge vested interest in socialized medicine. They are in a symbiotic relationship with the (D)emocrat-Socialist party.
Things have descended so quickly that all it takes are midnight attachments to bills to benefit companies. Like light bulb legislation or foreign generic drug bans, or whatever. These are not private companies by any normal use of the english language.
And in each and every case there is always someone who comes along and says: "good, I'm glad they banned it" or whatever. But eventually your own goose will get cooked. Count on it.
And in the case of tobacco, you couldn't find something more removed from free market forces if you tried. It is simultaneously extra-constitutional with enormous sin taxes that are essentially inter-state Tariffs, and it is rapidly approaching a repeat of Prohibition complete with all the black market organized crime waiting in the wings. When they mention Illegal Aliens doing the jobs we won't do, they need to include distribution and sale of "sinful" products tailor-made for MS-13 and every other criminal gang.
It's as if the national memory is an etch-a-sketch.