CVS pharamacies end the sale of cigarettes (including e-cigarettes until FDA regulation): This is important

In a move that shows real corporate social responsibility CVS/Caremark pharmacies has announced that is it going to stop selling cigarettes. This is an important substantive move that further removes exposure to tobacco and tobacco marketing from more people's lives and will make an important contribution to reaching former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop's vision of a smokefree society.

In press accounts CVS had said that they doubt that this move will actually reduce smoking. I think that is too pessimistic an assessment. Millions of people visit their pharmacies and removing tobacco imagery will almost certainly help prevent relapse of people who are trying to quit smoking. It is also one less place (actually over 7000 less places) that former smokers will be tempted to impulse by a pack of cigarettes.

The obvious next question is what Walgreens will do. When San Francisco became the first city to prohibit the sale of cigarettes in pharmacies, Walgreens sued to try and block the law (they lost) and Walgreens still sells cigarettes in it Fisherman's Wharf (a tourist area in San Francisco; photo courtesy of Matt Springer) store because that store does not include a pharmacy. Walgreens (and every other pharmacy) needs to follow CVS's lead.

This is an important symbolic step because it further send the message that tobacco is no longer part of civilized society and reinforces the fact that the cigarette/tobacco (which are increasingly the e-cigarette companies) are not legitimate businesses. As the federal RICO lawsuit against the cigarette companies (described in our book Bad Acts) established, the companies are racketeers, who are still under court orders designed to inhibit their ongoing "enterprise" to defraud the public. No legitimate business should be selling their products, something Walmart, the world's largest purveyor of cigarettes should consider.

And this symbolism could have important impacts on smoking. We have shown both in California and nationally that young adults who don't like or don't trust the tobacco companies are much less likely to smoke and, if they smoke, much more likely to be planning to quit.

It is also significant that CVS does not sell e-cigarettes and will not sell them until the FDA provides some "guidance." This is another responsible act, since not a single e-cigarette company has submitted an application to market c-cigarettes as either smoking cessation aids or reduced risk products, despite aggressively promoting these claims.

On this count, CVS is acting much more forcefully and responsibly than the Obama Administration's FDA, which is still sitting quietly while the e-cigarette companies make these unsupported therapeutic claims that e-cigarettes are effective for smoking cessation. The FDA has the current authority right now under current law and court decisions to initiate an enforcement action to stop these unsubstantiated claims.

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