Retailers Asked to Stop Selling Tobacco

Five big-box retailers with pharmacies have been asked by more than 24 states to stop selling cigarettes.

Rite Aid Corp. (E. Pennsboro Twp., Pa.), Walgreen Co. (Deerfield, Ill.), The Kroger Co. (Cincinnati), Safeway Inc. (Pleasanton, Calif.) and Walmart Stores Inc. (Bentonville, Ark.) all received letters from state attorneys general to take tobacco products off their shelves.

Earlier this year, pharmacy chain CVS Caremark Corp. (Woonsocket, R.I.) said it would remove all tobacco products from its stores by October.

“There is a contradiction in having these dangerous and devastating tobacco products on the shelves of a retail chain that services health care needs,” the letters said. Stopping the sale of tobacco products, they continued, “would effectively bring us full circle, back from the time when a tobacco manufacturer could advertise that 'more doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette' to a time when cigarettes simply cannot be purchased from a business that sells products prescribed by doctors.”

According to the New York Times, the group was led by Eric Schneiderman of New York and Mike DeWine of Ohio, and represented 28 states and territories, including New Hampshire, Mississippi, Rhode Island, Utah, Puerto Rico and Guam. No legal action was threatened.

CVS has estimated that the decision would cost it about $2 billion in sales, not only tobacco products themselves but also other items, like gum, that customers pick up incidentally. The retailer has sales of more than $120 billion.

The Times reported that a spokesman for Kroger said that the company believed in customer choice for its adult consumers.