In the early 2000's, CVS started treating patients at their MinuteClinics in the pharmacy. It became directly comparable to an actual doctors office, where cigarettes haven't been sold since the 1950's.

Anecdotally, and ironically, most of the people that are aware CVS made this move are inconvenienced smokers. I'd expect a huge continued marketing campaign around this endeavor in the US, but it hasn't been as strong as many other less impressive campaigns.

Not sure why everything has to be black and white. An individual or corporation can hold values that are against smoking but ok with alcohol.

Picking one and not the other does not invalidate the value.

>Anecdotally, and ironically, most of the people that are aware CVS made this move are inconvenienced smokers. I'd expect a huge continued marketing campaign around this endeavor in the US, but it hasn't been as strong as many other less impressive campaigns.

This is not surprising or ironic if the action was based more on ethics and less on PR/ virtue signaling.

CVS has chosen to stop contributing to a problem, and the behavior of other businesses has no bearing on whether they did the right thing.

Granted, it's hard to really know anything, but I'm not entirely sure what you're saying is true. There was probably at least a few people who just said screw it and stopped buying cigarettes because they wanted to quit and needed an impulse. Since their sales actually increased in the years following, and typically cigarettes have ancillary sales, I think at -least- a few people quit due to this move.