Rite Aid’s Bob Neveu, who is in charge of the pharmacy at the Colonial shopping center in Essex, maintains that even though Rite Aid still sell cigarettes, it is still cutting back in selling tobacco products generally. “We used to have a special cigar section in the stores,” he says, and now they have been eliminated.
Rite Aid’s Nevey admits he has always felt that, “It was somewhat incongruous for a health goods store, like Rite Aid, to be selling cigarettes.” However, regardless of the store manager’s personal feelings, cigarettes enjoy a prime spot behind the checkout counter at the front of the store, where Marlboro cigarette packages and other brands are on full display.
As for the CVS pharmacy chain, in its pharmacy in downtown Old Saybrook on Boston Post Road, it indeed appears that CVS is not selling cigarettes, true to its word. Not a single cigarette package was evident on recent visit. However, it does appear that CVS has not given up selling other tobacco products. On a recent visit right behind the checkout counters, although there were no cigarettes in view, there were clearly other kinds of tobacco products for sale.
When asked what they were, “We sell pipe tobacco and cigars,” said one of the women behind the CVS checkout counter.
This decision by CVS to not sell tobacco products speaks to the larger issue of “Big Brother” once again butting into our lives. I don’t purchase tobacco products, but I do shop–however, never again at CVS or any other institution that wants my money but thinks I’m too stupid to make my own decisions in life. There can’t be a person alive in this country who doesn’t know smoking is bad for his/her health, but apparently the CVS elite believe they can rescue us all by not selling tobacco products. Problem solved!! If CVS wants to be a health store rather than a variety store that also, by the way, sells prescriptions, they have a lot of shelf clearing to do!
FREEDOM means being free to make our own choices and decisions, good or bad, as long as we aren’t harming or endangering others.