BLOG: College of Nursing Dean on Tobacco Free Efforts

Following is a blog post from Janie Heath, dean and Warwick Professor of Nursing, University of Kentucky College of Nursing, a national leader in nursing education, tobacco control and health care outreach.

Sept. 19, 2014

CVS Health Stopping Sales of Tobacco Products

Why would a company in the business of health choose to sell products that so clearly destroy it?

Good question, admitted corporate executives at CVS Health, the nation’s second largest pharmacy chain. In a bold and courageous move, CVS Health executives announced this past February they would no longer sell, promote or carry tobacco products of any kind in any of their 7,700 stores (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/03/business/cvs-stores-stop-selling-all-tobacco-products.html?_r=0).

I’m happy to say that day is almost here — and a full month earlier than expected (http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/09/03/345494727). I’d be even happier if their competitors were joining them in banning these products that are directly responsible for 450,000 senseless, preventable deaths every year. There’s no such luck at this point.

CVS Health says the company expects to lose $2 billion a year in sales but said its decision was the right thing to do. As for the rest of the pharmacy chain store industry, they appear to remain curiously quiet, at least for now.

Here’s hoping the drumbeat that CVS Health started in the retail pharmacy industry continues to get louder and that influencers in government, business and the culture itself will beat that same drum in their own spheres of influence. How can they not? Tobacco use is the single biggest cause of preventable illness and death in the nation. And the state with the highest percentage of adult smokers is our own — Kentucky. 

In 2004, tobacco policy advocates at the University of Kentucky College of Nursing established The Kentucky Center for Smoke-Free Policy and began their own drumbeat, starting on the UK campus. By 2009, a campus-wide smoke-free policy was in effect. Today, all but two state universities have a smoke-free policy.

And the beat goes on. Last week, Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear announced that state-owned or leased buildings, vehicles and properties would be smoke-free starting in November. Currently, the ban only covers property controlled by the state’s executive branch of government.  Kentucky’s judicial and legislative branches have the decision-making authority to march to their own drummers. Let’s hope it’s the right one. 

Those of us who have devoted our professional careers to tobacco cessation research, intervention and public health policy are counting on companies like CVS Health and America’s public and private decision-makers, trendsetters and tastemakers to do the right thing. Tobacco companies are making a killing (literally) on a generation enslaved by a cruel addiction and they’re spending billions to come up with new products that may very well enslave the next.  E-cigarettes?  It’s “e-asy” to see how it could happen. 

Still, we have something the tobacco companies don’t. We have the facts. When the Surgeon General’s landmark report on smoking and health was released in 1965, 42 percent of American adults were smokers. Today that percentage has dropped to 18 percent. Better, yes, but that’s small comfort to the 16 million Americans suffering from a smoking-related disease right this minute or a nation paying close to $300 billion in smoking-related health care costs (http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/fast_facts/).

Still not hearing the drumbeat? Then hear this. An estimated 3,800 American children will try their first cigarette today. I, for one, am glad to know that soon they won’t be buying it (or having someone buy it for them) at CVS Health. How about you?