“Tobacco products have no place in a setting where healthcare is delivered, ” explained CVS CEO Larry Merlo after his company recently announced that it would soon stop selling cigarettes and other tobacco products. Bravo, Larry.
Not to be skeptical, but it’s amazing how long CVS has been selling cigarettes given how long that incongruous reality has been self-evident. But somebody had to go first. I’d call it enlightened self-interest for now.
In the short term, CVS, a Fortune 500 business, will lose about .015 per cent of total sales, but get credit–from President Obama to the health care industry–for doing the right thing. That has a bottom line too. And the onus will be on the competition to look like something other than blatant hypocrites. So, yes, bravo, Larry.
But the big retail impact will be when gas stations get religion.
The other big impact? When those warning labels on cigarette packs cut to the chase and make the case to vulnerably young smokers, sometimes called “invincibles” in the health-care insurance debate.
Last month in my one-man, day-after-Gasparilla clean-up around my neighborhood, I picked up a half-full pack of Camel cigarettes. I hadn’t held a pack of cigarettes, seriously, since high school (King Sano, for the record), and I scrutinized it like some anthropological artifact. Then I read the surgeon general’s warning: “Smoking Causes Lung Cancer, Heart Disease, Emphysema, And May Complicate Pregnancy.”
Whoa. That should be one hell of a deterrent. Personally, I wouldn’t touch another Snickers if an admonition said anything remotely like that.
But you know even bluntly ominous caveats don’t necessary register to those who still harbor a shot at immortality. There are still too many young, but impressionable smokers.
So, why not double down on the print-ad, peer-pressure- and vanity approach in the mandated, cig-pack messaging? Why not say: “Think you look cool? Actually, you look stupid for buying this insultingly overpriced product, one that flat-out harms your quality of life and can kill even, yes, you. You’re smarter than this, aren’t you? Well, aren’t you?”