Wal-Mart urged to end tobacco sales

Thursday, February 20, 2014

The recent decision by drugstore chain CVS Caremark to halt tobacco sales at its 7,600-plus stores prompted some lawmakers to ask other big-name retailers to do the same. Among them was the Bentonville-based Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the largest retailer of cigarettes in the country.

A Feb. 14 letter signed by Democratic U.S. Sens. Tom Harkin of Iowa, Dick Durbin of Illinois, Barbara Boxer of California, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Sheldon Whitehouse and Jack Reed of Rhode Island and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut asked Wal-Mart President and CEO Doug Mc-Millon to follow CVS’ “bold and admirable lead.” Harkin also is chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee.

“We recognize the legality of selling and profiting from tobacco products; however, Wal-Mart’s position as the nation’s largest retailer of any kind puts your company in a unique position to contribute to the health and well-being of all Americans,” the letter said.

Efforts to reach U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor by phone and email were unsuccessful. Sara Lasure with U.S. Sen. John Boozman’s office said Boozman was not approached about the letter.

“The senator believes that the decision for what a private business offers customers is best left up to individual businesses, not the government,” she said.

Also last week, the seven letter-signing senators - plus U.S. Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia - sent similar letters to pharmacy giants Walgreens and Rite Aid Corp., as well as the National Association of Chain Drug Stores urging them to follow CVS’ example by taking tobacco products off their shelves.

The letter to Wal-Mart quoted the retailer’s former president and CEO Lee Scott as saying “there are still a tremendous number of [Wal-Mart] customers who smoke.”

Scott, who served prior to the most recent past CEO, Mike Duke, reportedly made the comments to a group of Wall Street Journal editors in New York in 2008. “We’ve got a market to serve, and second we’ve got shareholders to think about,” he told the group. Efforts to obtain comment from Wal-Mart on Tuesday were unsuccessful.

Jamie Thornton, project coordinator for the Northwest Arkansas Tobacco and Drug Free Coalition in Springdale, applauded the senators’ efforts and encouraged others to engage in similar activities. Roughly $812 million was spent in Arkansas last year to treat tobacco-related illness, he said.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports the top four leading causes of deaths in Arkansas are tobacco-related: heart disease, lung cancer, chronic lower respiratory disease and stroke.

“If Wal-Mart was to take out cigarettes from their retail stores, it would help keep cigarettes out of kids’ hands,” Thornton said. The fewer places there are to buy tobacco, the fewer kids will try it, which will later help reduce the number of smoking adults.

The group of senators who signed the letter said 75 percent of adult smokers want to quit and that 85 percent of smokers say they have tried to quit at least once. As the world’s largest retailer, Wal-Mart is in a unique position “to contribute to the health and well-being of all Americans,” the senators said.

“By eliminating tobacco sales in your stores and further promoting cessation products, you can do an extraordinary service for the 100 million customers that shop in your U.S. stores every week and send a critical message to all Americans - and especially children - about the dangers of tobacco use,” they said in the letter.

Neither Durbin nor Harkin nor Boxer could be reached Tuesday, but Durbin’s press secretary, Maria McElwain, sent a statement saying, “Throughout his career, Sen. Durbin has been a leader in tobacco prevention efforts and believes that steps taken by the private sector to reduce tobacco use - like CVS’s recent decision to remove tobacco products from its stores - will help compliment federal efforts to curb the impact of smoking-related disease and death.”

A regional executive from American Lung Association was reported to have met with Wal-Mart on the issue of selling tobacco products last fall.

Business, Pages 25 on 02/20/2014