Somehow I doubt this comes as a surprise to CVS. I’m sure they crunched the numbers, saw cigarette sales were declining anyway, due to increased taxes almost every year and simply more people quitting every year, and simply decided to get out in front of the reality and stop the sales before everyone else. For publicity sake.
It never made sense to me anyway, for a pharmacy, a business allegedly IN business to make money by helping people be healthier, would sell cigarettes and other tobacco products. It makes no sense, other than a financial reason to do so. But since (probably) sales of cigarettes were down anyway (due to the reason above) they decided to end it early. Rip the bandaid off so to speak, realizing they would take a hit initially but in the long run, the benefit to their image as a pharmacy (as well as projected sales of cigs diminishing anyway) offset the initial financial losses in their opinion.
I say all of this as a pack a day smoker myself. I’m not offended at all that they stopped selling cigarettes. It makes a heck of a lot more sense as a business supposedly in the business of helping people’s health to not sell one of the most toxic legal products on the market.
Now if they really wanted to take the moral high road (so to speak) they would stop selling anything but prescription and over the counter drugs. No Doritoes or sodas. No candy or even beer and wine (which they do indeed sell in states like Virginia where one can buy such beverages at virtually any store). So there is a bit of hypocrisy there. But it only serves my claim more that ultimately this was a financial decision really. They saw cig sales declining anyway and decided to get out of Dodge early.
I suppose long term CVS wants to be a health care provider for socialized medicine. They already have these minute clinics.
But in the short term they are losers because there is usually a walgreens across the street with lower prices and selling cigs.