Standing Up to Big Tobacco

Late last week CVS CAREMARK announced that by late third quarter all stores and retail outlets will no longer sell cigarettes. It took 50 years since Surgeon General Luther Terry first announced that cigarette smoking was hazardous to our health for any major pharmacy chain to take this bold step. It's about time.

On January 28, I wrote a commentary called Call for Philip Morris, where I talked about the death of the Marlboro Man, the role of the Surgeon General and the hypocrisy of the US government subsidy to tobacco companies via the Department of Agriculture, while discouraging tobacco usage with all the package warnings, through HHS.

It's amazing that it took so long for any pharmacy, whose primary business is to promote and improve health, whether by filling prescriptions, selling OTC medications,

Luther Terry (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

holding "Health Awareness" seminars or providing flu shots to seniors and others. Yet, to sell cigarettes so late in the game is quite a strange reversal from all the good they do.

As I discussed in the above mentioned commentary, I smoked for 35 years before I was finally able to stop. When I finally did, I used the nicotine patch which in 1995 could be obtained only by prescription. The strange thing was that the nicotine delivery system which addicted me in the first place was sold over the counter with no prescription necessary.

Today of course, no script is necessary to help any of us stop smoking. Sadly, many of us have been injured in so many ways by smoking. We either, started smoking when we were young and stupid or had difficulty stopping when we finally came to our senses. Many become sick with affected diseases in the process.

Since 2003, Philip Morris Companies has been known as Altria Group, which owns Philip Morris, US Tobacco Co, General Foods and Nabisco, among other companies. At one time, it also owned Kraft Foods but spun that off in 2001. I mention this only so that you are aware that Altria's primary business is still tobacco.

CVS should be commended for taking this bold action, foregoing corporate profits for people's health. Perhaps other companies, like Rite-Aid, Walgreens, Wal-Mart, Target and other retailers who also maintain pharmacy subsidiaries, will follow the lead of CVS. This action, if done en masse, will have a major impact on tobacco companies' profits in the United States.

Then the US government must also finally learn to end the hypocrisy of tobacco subsidies. These are all multi-billion dollar companies, who don't need any more government handouts. We are broke, in case anybody cares. 

Which company will take that next brave step? Or will they continue to blow smoke?