Putting pressure on tobacco retailers

Last month's announcement by CVS/Pharmacy that it would "stop selling cigarettes and all tobacco products at its more than 7,600 stores nationwide by October 1, 2014" has focused attention on the role that retail outlets play in their sale. If other major retailers were to follow CVS/Pharmacy's lead, perhaps we could push already declining rates of tobacco use even lower (currently, fewer than 1 in 5 Americans smoke cigarettes).

In the wake of the CVS move, to put pressure on other tobacco-selling retailers, 26 prominent health groups have issued an open letter, calling on drug stores and other retailers to stop selling tobacco products. Recent studies have shown that reasons for the voluntary abandonment of tobacco sales are complex: retailers identified the obvious relationship between tobacco use and disease and death, regulatory pressures, an enhanced image, and already declining tobacco sales among the drivers of change. In their 2011 study published in BMC Public Health, Patricia McDaniel and Ruth Malone, highlight the importance of such changes, writing that "voluntary retailer abandonment of tobacco sales both reflects and extends social norm changes that have problematized tobacco…"

Let's hope that ongoing pressure on tobacco-selling retailers can continue to transform social norms around tobacco's sale and use.

The full letter and signatories – among them the American Public Health Association, of which I am a member – is below:

Open Letter to America's Retailers, Especially Those with Pharmacies, From Leading Public Health and Medical Organizations February 26, 2014

Read more about The Public's Health.