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" UPDATE: As of September 3, 2014, CVS has stopped selling tobacco products at all of its 7,700 stores nationwide. CVS Health, formerly known as CVS Caremark, first announced that they would remove tobacco products from their shelves on February 5, 2014. Below is our response to the news that day \u2014 we&amp;#039;re glad to see CVS fulfill its commitment. CVS Caremark pharmacies took a powerful stance against the tobacco industry this morning. The nationwide drugstore chain announced that they&amp;#039;ll stop selling tobacco products by October 2014, in an effort to shift their focus to providing health care and wellness-focused products. Although the company projects a loss of $2 billion in revenue, Helena Foulkes, CVS Pharmacy president, sees this as an essential move. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s virtually impossible to be in the tobacco business when you want to be a health care partner to the health care system,&amp;quot; Foulkes said in a statement. Every year, 480,000 people in the U.S. die from tobacco-related illnesses, yet 18 percent of Americans still smoke. While the decision by CVS won&amp;#039;t keep people from smoking, it looks like the chain is hoping that making tobacco products more difficult to obtain will dissuade consumers and also encourage other retailers to follow their lead. Good Housekeeping took similar steps in our history, banning cigarette advertisements from the pages of our magazine in 1952 after European studies positively linked smoking to cancer. This was 12 years before the U.S. Surgeon General released its game-changing report on tobacco in 1964. Health warnings didn&amp;#039;t appear on cigarettes until 1970.  We applaud CVS for its bold move and the message it sends about the dangers of smoking. We hope other retailers do follow suit. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/institute/a21600/cvs-stops-selling-cigarettes/>