Charting state’s tobaccofree future

Five years ago this month, CVS Health removed all tobacco products from our shelves. When you walk into any CVS Pharmacy in Connecticut, you are guaranteed to never find a carton of cigarettes, a tin of chewing tobacco, or the latest ecigarette.

At the time of our bold move, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that an average of 20 percent of adults nationwide smoked and research had already proven a direct correlation between smoking and various diseases — many with longterm health consequences that costs the economy $300 billion annually. Equally troubling, tobacco use had extended to the next generation, where an average of 6.7 percent of high school seniors smoked cigarettes daily.

Because of this continued threat, we dedicated our company to helping people on the path to better health. And, this meant not just what we sell but, importantly, what we don’t sell. That’s why we quit tobacco, and why we wanted to show people they could too.

Not long after our actions, researchers found that stopping the sale of those products had an almost immediate impact on the buying habits of tobacco users. According to a 2017 study, published in the American Journal of Public Health, smokers purchased nearly 100 million fewer packs of cigarettes in states where CVS Pharmacy had a 15 percent or greater share of the retail pharmacy market, reaffirming previous research that availability directly impacts use. What the study also found was that those who purchased cigarettes exclusively at CVS Pharmacy were 38 percent more likely to stop buying cigarettes and those who purchased three or more packs per visit were more than twice as likely to stop buying cigarettes altogether.

Fast forward to today. The average national adult smoking rate is down to 13.8 percent, and the number of high school seniors smoking cigarettes has dropped to 3.6 percent nationwide. And the public agrees that our actions are driving positive health outcomes. According to a recent survey conducted by Morning Consult, in the Northeast part of the United States, nearly 68 percent of adults believe that our decision to stop selling tobacco products reduces the risk of chronic disease, while 72 percent believe it addresses public health disparities.

In the last few years, we have continued to partner with experts across the public health community and invest in best practices to help prevent tobacco use. Through a fiveyear, $50 million investment, these strategies have helped increase the number of people leading tobaccofree lives and moved us one step closer to delivering the nation’s first tobaccofree generation.

For example, we’ve partnered with the Truth Initiative and the American Cancer Society to engage hundreds of schools, like Fairfield University, Housatonic Community College, and Naugatuck Valley Community College, to advocate for, adopt and implement tobaccofree campus policies. As a result of our efforts, more than 80 campuses have been added to the ranks of smokeand tobaccofree colleges and universities in the past two years.

As the marketplace for tobacco products has evolved, notably with the rise in popularity of ecigarette and vaping products, so has our strategy. Research shows young people who vape are four times more likely to begin smoking cigarettes in the future, so we have invested millions of dollars into efforts to deliver youth smoking and ecigarette prevention strategies and education to classrooms across the United States. A new $100,000 grant from the CVS Health Foundation to SHAPE America will help distribute the smokeSCREEN game from the Yale Center for Health and Learning Games to schools across the country, with the goal of reaching up to 500,000 students in 2019.

But the work is not close to finished. The adult smoking rate in Connecticut is now 12.7 percent and, for the first time in a generation, youth tobacco use has increased — a trend believed to be the result of the rapid and dramatic rise in ecigarette use among young people. The dangers of those products to our youth and the marketing campaigns that target them are very troubling.

We are at a critical moment in our nation’s efforts to end tobacco use — an epidemic that continues to kill more people than any other preventable cause of death, cost the country billions of dollars that could be put to better use and threaten the health of our next generation.

With our partners, CVS Health is committed to making even more progress where a tobaccofree generation in the U.S. seems possible, and not a faraway dream. But we cannot do it alone. We urge you to join the effort to end tobacco use in your community.