Posted on 02/05/2014 5:01:07 AM PST by Red in Blue PA
CVS Caremark is kicking the habit of selling tobacco products at its more than 7,600 drugstores nationwide as it focuses more on providing health care.
The nation's second-largest drugstore chain said Wednesday that it will phase out cigarettes, cigars and chewing tobacco by Oct. 1, a move that will cost about $2 billion in annual revenue but won't affect its 2014 earnings forecast. CVS Caremark leaders say removing tobacco will help them grow the company's business of working with doctors, hospitals and other care providers to improve customers' health.
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
It’s not an erosion of freedom.
CVS is a private enterprise. If they want to make the short-sighted business decision to drop tobacco sales, it’s entirely their call.
If I were a stockholder of CVS, I would not be happy, either from a profit standpoint or from their attempting to restrict freedom of choice. Are they still selling food with high fructose corn syrup? Snacks with artificial ingredients and transfats? Morning after pills? What's next?
Yeah, heard it was a 2 billion loss per year to them.
That’s gotta affect the stock price.
10 years from now, CVS will no longer exist. The brand just committed suicide.
the national firearms act of 1934 made suppressors illegal unless licensed and regulated by taxing it.
the govt., especially the current regime, will not relinquish any gun laws on the books....they would consider this backsliding....
Someone who gets it. Am amazed that so many are fin with this on a so called freedom loving Conservative site.
Well, if they truly cared about the public health as they claim they would repel it.
Other products to remove...Pringles, Beer and Wine, Beef Jerky, Little Debbie Cakes, Scissors...
Perhaps they should not allow cars into their parking lots either, as MVA’s are one of the largest cause of death.
Amazing that a so-called freedom loving conservative would have a problem with a private company choosing to no longer stock a product that no longer fits within the company’s business plan.
Caffine will be left alone.
A private company choosing not to sell cancer sticks, should be fine with the majority of conservatives.
For now.
Just wait.
They will come for that too once they have gotten everything they can from tobacco and their obesity campaign.
NOTHING is off limits to them.
Dollar General on the other hand recently added tobacco. Someone who works there told me their customers wouldn’t stop asking for it.
And the German grocery chain Aldi is actually TWO companies, because the brothers who founded it could not agree on whether to sell tobacco. So they split the company in half. They do in some countries and not in others, depending on which brother got control of that side of the business. (we got the smoke free brother here in the US).
2 billion out of total revenues of ~94 billion.
More importantly, that’s only the short-term impact. Their long-term strategy is, in part, to expand their minute clinics and become more of a hybrid pharmacy and health provider. This move fits squarely within that long-term plan.
You nailed it. I’m not a smoker and I hate the anti smoking nazis. But this isn’t about that. CVS has a right not to sell a product...unlike the government which MAKES is buy their health insurance. Screw the Nazis, but Go CVS.
Which, according to Forbes, is roughly 1.5% of total revenue. I'd call that inconsequential.
No pressure....more like collusion. CVS wants to be a drum major in the Obamacare parade.
From July 2013
Revenue perhaps but I wonder about profit?
I assume tobacco is one of their most profitable items.
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