On Wednesday, Walgreens said it had been assessing its sales of tobacco products for some time. We will continue to evaluate the choice of products our customers want, while also helping to educate them and providing smoking cessation products and alternatives that help to reduce the demand for tobacco products, according to a statement released by the company. Although CVS ranks first in overall sales and pharmacy sales among the nation s drugstores, according to analysts, Walgreens is the largest in the number of stores.

Rite Aid, another large chain, said in a statement it continually reviewed product mix to make sure it suits the needs and desires of customers.

As for driving away customers to competitors, Troyen A. Brennan, the executive vice president and chief medical officer for CVS, said It s obvious that the average person will just find somewhere else to buy cigarettes. What we re thinking about is if others want to emulate this business decision we ve made, then over time that will make cigarettes less available and scientific literature does suggest that a reduction in the availability of cigarettes reduces smoking.

Dr. Brennan, together with Steven A. Schroeder of the Smoking Cessation Leadership Center at the University of California, San Francisco, wrote an op ed article making the case for eliminating tobacco products from drugstores in The Journal of the American Medical Association published online on Wednesday.

Some 18 percent of American adults smoke, down from 42 percent in 1965. In places like New York City, which has used a combination of steep taxes on cigarettes and bans on smoking in most places to discourage smokers, the decline is even greater, down to 14 percent.

But health experts remain concerned because the rate of decline has stagnated over the last decade, and some 480,000 deaths each year are linked to smoking. From 1999 to 2003, for example, the smoking prevalence among high school girls dropped 37 percent, according to the Centers for Disease Control, but from 2003 to 2007, the decline was only 2.3 percent.

This month, a group of seven advocacy organizations including the American Heart Association and the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids called on governments to take steps to reduce smoking rates to less than 10 percent over the next decade and ensure no American is exposed to secondhand smoke within five years.

We have seen the decrease in initiation of smoking plateau, particularly among some populations of young people, and we ve been working very hard on those populations that have been stubbornly hard to reduce but we need to redouble our efforts, said Risa Lavizzo Mourey, the chief executive of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Decreasing the availability of tobacco products as CVS is doing is an important and bold step toward making it harder for people to get access to these harmful products.

Coincidentally, the F.D.A. announced on Tuesday the start of a national education program aimed at preventing smoking among youth. The ads, which will be distributed across social media platforms, try to show teenagers the toll that smoking takes on the body in memorable ways, such as a young man who uses a pair of pliers to pull a stained tooth from his mouth to buy a pack of cigarettes.

A shortage of primary care doctors and expanding access to health care coverage under the Affordable Care Act is turning drugstore chains into big players in the nation s health care system. Consumers routinely get flu shots in drugstores, for instance, and clinics staffed by nurse practitioners or physician assistants and offering basic care for common ailments like strep throat or pink eye are popping up everywhere from Walgreens to Walmart.

A report last year by Accenture predicted such so called retail clinics were poised to grow at a rate of 25 to 30 percent over the next few years, which would swell the number to 2,800 in 2015, from 1,400 in 2012.

CVS s 800 MinuteClinics already account for most of such outlets, and Mr. Merlo said the company hoped to add another 700 for a total of 1,500 by 2017. For that reason, he said, the decision to stop selling tobacco products was really more of a discussion about how to position the company for future growth.

The company estimated that the decision would erase 17 cents in earnings per share of stock annually, but that it had identified ways of offsetting the impact on profits. (The earnings hit this year will only be 6 cents to 9 cents a share while the company works through its remaining inventory of tobacco products.)

The company hopes to make up some of the lost revenue and income with a smoking cessation program that it is starting this spring with the goal of getting half a million Americans to stop smoking. Helena Foulkes, executive vice president for CVS, said This is the kind of offering we can bring to clients like insurance plans and companies, many of which will pay for such a program.

Unregulated e-cigarettes raise plenty of worries :: wral.com

Scams

E cigarettes are everywhere and sales are exploding. They soared from $500 million in 2012 to an estimated $1.5 billion in 2013.

“E cigarettes hold a replaceable cartridge that contains nicotine, solvents and flavorings. When that’s heated up by the battery, it atomizes the solution and creates an inhalable vapor,” described Jamie Kopf of Consumer Reports.

The e cigarette market is not federally regulated like normal cigarettes, although the FDA is in the process of creating some guidelines.

Some local governments and businesses don’t allow e cigarettes. They are banned in Wake, Durham and Cumberland county school systems, and they cannot be sold to anyone under 18 in North Carolina.

In areas where smoking bans are the norm, some people fire up e cigarettes where traditional ones are illegal.

Commercials promote them as a more socially acceptable alternative to smoking.

While there’s no tobacco, e cigarettes do contain is nicotine. In different samples, the FDA detected a toxic chemical used in antifreeze and some carcinogens.

“Like in the early days of tobacco cigarettes, it’s just not clear yet what the long term effects of using these products are going to be,” Kopf said.

Plenty of people turn to e cigarettes to drop tobacco.

Nina Weinberg Doran is a satisfied user. “From the day I started using it, I did not smoke another cigarette,” she said. “It worked. It took away that oral thing, and there’s no smell, there’s no matches, there’s no smell in your hair, your clothes, your car.”

Although, in a study done last fall, only about 7 percent had stopped smoking after six months.

Another concern is that flavors with names like peach schnapps, cherry crush and vivid vanilla may entice young people to smoke.

“Our advice is Don’t start with e cigarettes just for fun,” Kopf said. “And if you’re trying to quit smoking, stick with approved and better studied methods, like nicotine gum, patches, and counseling.”