CVS and tobacco: The right move

For decades, it has been counterintuitive that pharmacies that deliver health promotion products and are Medicare and Medicaid providers also distribute tobacco products to their patients. That an average patient can get antihypertensive medications, cholesterol-lowering drugs, and a pack of cigarettes – all from the same place – is misaligned. As patients and providers, we want our health care establishments to promote healthy behaviors.

So it was the right move for Larry Merlo, president and CEO of CVS/Caremark, to announce that CVS pharmacy will stop selling tobacco products in their stores this October. Cigarettes, cigars, and chewing tobacco will all be phased out. This will occur in combination with efforts from CVS for a tobacco cessation program to help to promote wellness among their customers.

This is certainly in the best interest of their customers’ health, but may come with some economic complications for the company. Today, 19% of Americans smoke as compared with more than 40% in the mid-1960s, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Despite the tremendous reduction in smoking prevalence, tobacco sales still comprise an important source of revenue for pharmacies. Discontinuing their sales may come with some economic burden.

As more pharmacies, and particularly CVS pharmacy, move to a model of facilitating wellness by offering retail health clinics, labs, and vaccinations, in addition to more traditional pharmacy services, it makes sense that they will make choices in alignment with patient-centered wellness. It is likely that other pharmacies will also follow CVS’s lead if they want to provide value to their consumers in promoting health. To not move in that direction of promoting health better would discredit the other service offerings to promote care delivery.

While this change today is monumental, it is necessary to promote the health of patients. As a cancer care provider, I hope that all health care providers will act in alignment of promoting wellness and reducing the burden of disease from tobacco. It is likely that this decision on the part of CVS to decrease pharmacy access to tobacco products will do more to reduce the burden of morbidity and mortality from tobacco use in the next decade than all of the drugs that they will distribute.

Dr. Patt is a practicing oncologist at Texas Oncology in Austin. She is the medical director for both healthcare informatics and the Pathways Task Force at the US Oncology Network/McKesson Specialty Health and chairs the cancer committee at the Texas Medical Association.