Plan B Forum

Publicly traded companies often do things against their economic self-interest by accident (the Aztek, Netflix trying to split off the streaming business) but I can't off hand think of an example like this where it was deliberate. $2B in lost sales per year is a significant cut to the bottom line.

I'm glad they did it. And it speaks well of them. I'm just surprised, that's all.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/won ... tte-sales/

CVS to stop selling cigarettes by Oct. 1

By Sarah Kliff
February 5 at 9:00 am

CVS, one of the nation’s largest drugstore chains, said Wednesday that it will stop selling cigarettes at its 7,600 locations in an expensive but calculated bid to boost its image as a full-fledged health-care provider rather than a simple purveyor of greeting cards and shampoo.

Executives said the move will cost the company $2 billion a year in lost sales. But they are gambling that abandoning smokers will help them strike more profitable deals with hospitals and health insurers — and appeal to growing ranks of customers newly insured under the Affordable Care Act. ... "

I suspect that the tide of people quitting and the growing anti-smoking sentiment drove them to get on the right side of history in advance of being pushed. Selling cigarettes is like, and is more and more understood to be like, selling heroin. Profiteering from misery and death. One notes how few of the Boston Brahmin families admit that their fortunes were originally made selling opium to China.


CVS made the right calculation. I would like to believe that they were motivated by the right reasons but will be content with enlightened self-interest.


yrs,
rubato

Yes that's a good first step. Even better if they stopped selling quack "medicines" to millions of moronic 'health' faddists.

We would have to repeal the Orrin Hatch bill which let open the floodgates for lying snake-oil salesmen ah neutraceuticals.

http://www.politicususa.com/2013/11/10/ ... amins.html


But I disagree that would be 'better', most quack medicines are not lethal like cigarettes are.


yrs,
rubato

Yes that's true - not lethal. But please note: it was not stated that banning quackmeds is better than banning ciggies.

The cigarette ban is a good first step. Taking a useful second step is always "better" than not taking it.

No ciggies good. No ciggies + no quack meds is better. No ciggies + no quackmeds + no high-sugar carbonated beverages even better. And so on.

The government here is just beginning to stir itself a little to recognise that an entire raft of spurious off-the-shelf med companies make outrageously false claims for their effectiveness and there is sort of a notion that maybe something should be done some day.

What holds it all back of course is "traditional medicine", which in the (overwhelmingly) main course of events is utter bollocks (and in some cases, dried ox bollocks) - but the ANC does not want to be seen to be interfering with "tradition", although overlooking the rape thing is beginning to become difficult for the poor dears.

CVS still sells alcoholic beverages. I guess they figure any good full-fledged health provider should offer you a drink.

And a Twinkie...

And lotto tickets

Well, good for CVS. I had lately defected to Walgreens, for no good reason other than they had opened a new store across the street, but I'll be going back to CVS now.

Sue U wrote:Well, good for CVS. I had lately defected to Walgreens, for no good reason other than they had opened a new store across the street, but I'll be going back to CVS now.

Yea, put that in your pipe and smoke it, Walgreens!

Your pharmacies sell tobacco? ROTFLMFFAO!!

It is not what you think, Gob. We have pharmacies located within many different types of larger stores, from convenience stores, to full service grocery stores, to big box grocers. We have very few pure pharmacies left. Even the outfits that started as pharmacies have expanded to become convenience stores or even bigger. So, essentially CVS is putting itself at a disadvantage by giving up on a big sale item on the convenience store side of their operation, since other stores that have pharmacies within will be happy to take that business and improve their profit margins.

Gob--it makes sense, after all the smoking demonizers have called tobacco a "drug" for years--what better place to buy drugs than a pharmacy?

Actually, my guess is that CVS sees the sales of tobacco products as too labor intensive--in my state cigarettes are behind counters and have to be retrieved by the clerk (and the profit the store makes does not justify it). A convenience store relies on smokers for a large portion of their customer base--I don't think pharmacies do.

Big RR wrote:Gob--it makes sense, after all the smoking demonizers have called tobacco a "drug" for years--what better place to buy drugs than a pharmacy?

Neat!

Gob wrote:Your pharmacies sell tobacco? ROTFLMFFAO!!

This is Amurrica you damn heathen! Land of the free, paranoid, drug-addicted, and heavily armed.

You can buy beer, bourbon, handguns and ammo, condoms, schedule II drugs (like Oxycontin!), cigarettes, and cheap shit from China all without going outside!

Where you been, boy? We are the Kings of Commerce, the Regents of Retail, The Monarchs of Merchandizing!

Just how do you think we got to have the grossest national product in the world? By laying around and making it tough on the George Zimmers of this world to be fully and lethally equipped when his/her hour of trial arrived?

Hell No! Convenience. That's the ticket.


yrs,
rubato

"Red-Blooded American and Goddamn Proud of it."

Gob wrote:Your pharmacies sell tobacco? ROTFLMFFAO!!

They are not just pharmacies...most are also convenience stores. (In some small towns, the only convenience store.) Many also sell beer & wine.

rubato wrote:

Gob wrote:Your pharmacies sell tobacco? ROTFLMFFAO!!

This is Amurrica you damn heathen! Land of the free, paranoid, drug-addicted, and heavily armed.

You can buy beer, bourbon, handguns and ammo, condoms, schedule II drugs (like Oxycontin!), cigarettes, and cheap shit from China all without going outside!

Where you been, boy? We are the Kings of Commerce, the Regents of Retail, The Monarchs of Merchandizing!

Just how do you think we got to have the grossest national product in the world? By laying around and making it tough on the George Zimmers of this world to be fully and lethally equipped when his/her hour of trial arrived?

Hell No! Convenience. That's the ticket.


yrs,
rubato

"Red-Blooded American and Goddamn Proud of it."

Looks like rube is on the sauce again..............

And you are too drunk to have a functioning sense of humor. Pity for you!


yrs,
rubato

I thought rubato's post was hilarious!

I thought it was funny (and intended to be so).

If you're going to do something inadvertently being, funny is better than nearly all of the alternatives. Maybe all.

yrs,
rubato