Take it easy and read this entire post before you start giving me dirty looks. I’m not hating on CVS. Please don’t send me emails talking about how I need to be grateful about the recent announcement regarding their cease on the sale tobacco products. I am actually extremely grateful. I am proud of my former employer for making this kind of gutsy decision. When I worked there as a teen (it was Peoples Drug Store) I would work on holiday weekends. I swear that every other customer wanted cigarettes and sodas. They made some serious moolah selling tobacco products. We all know by now how bad tobacco products are for the human body so giving up on the sale of them is a smarty decision that should have been made a long time ago. If you’re gonna be a health care provider of any sorts, cigarettes and chewing tobacco shouldn’t be on your shelves. However, I am praying that this is only a first step for them. They need to make a few more changes before I can give them my full stamp of approval.
Food sales don’t quite go with this ‘We’re a health care center’ theme
Take a look at this…
And this…..
And this…
Oh and THIS….
Processed foods, albeit tasty to many people, are terribly unhealthy. They usually contain high levels of sugar, fat, and sodium. And yet all these items are readily available at the very same pharmacy where people pick up their prescriptions to tame their diabetes, high blood pressure, and cancer. Talk about mixed messages. Are you going to help us get well for real or keep us sick enough to keep us running back to your pharmacy for drugs? If they are truly going to make the transformation into a place of health and wellness, this crap has got to go.
Why do they even sell food in the first place? I know the point is to make things convenient for our busy society and give us less errands to run but this makes no sense. In the long run, they hurt us more than they help us. I personally like the convenience of having a wellness clinic attached to the pharmacy. Diagnose my strep throat and give me the antibiotics for it all in one visit so that I can concentrate on getting well. But with all the food, toys, holiday-themed junk, grills, pet food, and goo gobs of beauty products, beer, wine, CVS looks more like a flea market with a pharmacy attached to the back.
Their pockets are not exactly going to grow a hole without tobacco sales
So they are a pharmacy, correct? Yes they are. And as a pharmacy, CVS sells prescription drugs. Do you know how much Americans are investing in prescription drugs these days? (Hint: we’re not in the millions anymore, Toto.) Here’s a few numbers for you number crunchers:
- $11 billion are spent on antidepressants
- $7 billion are spent on ADHD meds
- $4.5 billion spent on sleep meds (you would think I would be one of them with my crazy insomnia problems)
If CVS wants to pretend they care about our health by cutting out tobacco they will make up for the loss of sales by pushing the processed foods and fueling diabetes rates (diabetes meds cost $6,000 on average), high blood pressure (ahem…$55 billion a year), and cancer from the preservatives that keep the foods in their stores colorful for years on end (cancer drugs costs more than $100,000 annually). Compound that with the money they will most assuredly collect by working with other health care management companies. So I’m not exactly ready to give them some sorta martyr of the year award. They’ll be fine. No worries.
Bottom line: I like the decision you made CVS but let’s keep going. No time to rest on your laurels yet boys. Go full force with your transformation and watch the magic happen.
