Chain not selling tobacco products is hypocritical

CVS Pharmacy, a highly-respected national chain, announced this week that they have discontinued the sale of tobacco products.

As a not-so-proud longtime smoker, I fully understand the dangers of tobacco usage and cannot defend or argue against this tobacco ban by CVS.

But I can address hypocrisy.

I assume that CVS will continue to sell sugar-laden products and fatty snack foods that are a prime cause of a massive obesity problem in this country.

Statistics clearly indicate that health-related issues from these products contribute greatly to the obesity problem in this country.

I also notice that CVS continues to have long aisles of alcohol for sale.

In some recent travels, I reluctantly but understandably accepted the tobacco ban at all restaurants and motels I visited.

It's down right foolish to try and defend smoking. The science is clear and the dangers are real.

But various studies show that a third or more Americans currently have or will develop health issues from eating products that create this obesity crisis. And the health and safety issues relating to alcohol are well documented.

So tobacco is an easy target. No problem.

But if you stack up the health care costs that we all pay, the damage from obesity or alcohol-related issues will outdistance the smoking-related issues any day.

A decades-old campaign to eliminate smoking has had phenomenal results. Tobacco use has declined sharply from the bad old days and the result is a healthier public with a lower health care cost from smoking related issues.

Good for us!

But the trend on obesity has gone in the other direction and in a very drastic manner. Yet despite a similar health campaign addressing obesity, we are still larger and less healthy today than in the bad old days.

I cannot and will not condemn the move by CVS. I can even find myself agreeing with their decision.

But yet those very same aisles that carried tobacco still carry products that in their own way are just as harmful and just as costly.

That is a definition of hypocrisy.

CVS was an earlier supporter of Obamacare and organized sign-ups to the national health care overhaul in their stores. So I am not surprised they have joined with the movement to ban tobacco products.

But I find some level of irony in their continued sale of products that have been shown equally as dangerous and harmful to our health.

Here's the bottom line. I would strongly suspect that tobacco sales were an insignificant portion of the company's business. So this new ban is more symbolic than substantive.

Alcohol sales on the other hand are probably a much greater share of their business.

Maybe now I understand the tobacco ban.