What no tobacco at CVS Drug Stores?

[Marshalscienceguy]

Smart move, why don't the other "drug stores" do this? How about remove alcoholic drinks, junk foods and sugar drinks? Because that is mostly what drug stores have to offer people to eat and drink, in the food deserts, and everywhere else. Then folks can also buy the medicines they need to take AFTER and WHILE they screw up their health by a life-time of poor eating habits.

 

For most of human history, food has been a scarcity, until now. It is still scare in many poor nations, but here in the good old USA we have plenty of processed foods with a long shelf life, junk food and drinks available for most people. So eat a lot and enjoy your FREEDOM to frequent culinary orgasm from salt, sugar, and trans-fats. People eat for entertainment now, not for sustenance. That is why they need to go to the convenient drug stores to get their fix of processed foods, salt, sugar, fats, alcohol, but no longer tobacco at CVS.

 

The cost of health care will certainly go sky high in the future, thanks to human willingness to eat too much junk food, just for FUN, because when it comes to eating, all that matters is it is a lot of FUN. Then they can buy their pharmaceuticals and see their doctors frequently. But don't worry, they can afford it because their health care will be paid for by our taxes.

Many CVS stores will only or mostly sell diabetic safe snacks and health drinks that each have different nutrients in it. Which are like health/sport drinks like vita-waters and those sort of things. So yes this apply to most other-things. However sometimes they will still sell soda but when you get soda from CVS its always 5 bucks more than it would be in a regular market.

[iNow]

Many CVS stores will only or mostly sell diabetic safe snacks and health drinks that each have different nutrients in it.

I'd like to see some evidence of this claim. I'm very confident it's false, but I am open to correction. Perhaps your definition of "many" and "mostly" are different from mine, though.

[Trumptor]

I would hope that people would get sick of controls and revolt before something like this would happen. It would be a sad world if the "quantity over quality" of life wins out and we live to 90 on average by being forced to run on treadmills like hamsters and our diets consist on carrots and salads, while our grandparents lived to 85 by enjoying their lives with a morning coffee, steak and cheese here and there, and a few drinks with friends on occasion. I never even thought this would be seriously considered as an option.

[Popcorn Sutton]

Did you guys know that 90% of food in our grocery stores didn't exist 90 years ago? The only ones that I know of are milk and corn flakes. Give it another 90 years and let's see what happens.

[iNow]

The govt installed cameras is over doing it, but in the future, after the world's population is about 20 Billion, then controls and "encouragement" WILL be placed on citizens, that we don't have now, including everyone must participate in some athletics.

What else does your crystal ball tell you? Perhaps you could PM me this week's lottery numbers instead?

 

 

I would hope that people would get sick of controls and revolt before something like this would happen. It would be a sad world if the "quantity over quality" of life wins out and we live to 90 on average by being forced to run on treadmills like hamsters and our diets consist on carrots and salads, while our grandparents lived to 85 by enjoying their lives with a morning coffee, steak and cheese here and there, and a few drinks with friends on occasion. I never even thought this would be seriously considered as an option.

It's not. We're talking about CVS pharmacies no longer selling cigarettes, not this Orwellian right-wing nightmare of being required to actually take better care of themselves.

 

 

Did you guys know that 90% of food in our grocery stores didn't exist 90 years ago? The only ones that I know of are milk and corn flakes.

This also appears unsupported and unrelated to the actual discussion intended by the OP (even though a quick counter is that most of the aforementioned 90% of foods are themselves made of corn or soy or wheat or meat, etc... and so hardly "didn't exist 90 years ago," but again... totally irrelevant and off-topic).

[Airbrush]

In the future foods CAN be engineered so it tastes great and yet it is also full of all the nutrients we need. We don't have that capability yet.

 

When humans eventually become too squeamish to slaughter animals, then "meat" that tastes exactly like REAL animal carcass, should be available made from cheep vegetable sources.

 

The Orwellian nightmare is just me exaggerating and trying to be funny. Sorry. I doubt the world's population will ever pass 10 Billion.

Edited February 17, 2014 by Airbrush

[Marshalscienceguy]

I'd like to see some evidence of this claim. I'm very confident it's false, but I am open to correction. Perhaps your definition of "many" and "mostly" are different from mine, though.

You want me to get a picture of CVS stores? Well I found one this picture online. I guess I can get some real life photos by walking into the shop too next time I go. This health drink seems to be popular.

Edited February 17, 2014 by Marshalscienceguy

[Airbrush]

Vitamin water only "seems" to be a healthy drink. It actually has a lot of refined sugar. Choose, instead, Vitamin Water ZERO, that is what my doctor told me. Liquid refined sugar is the fastest way to gain weight, according to my wife, who is a nurse.

[iNow]

You want me to get a picture of CVS stores? Well I found one this picture online. I guess I can get some real life photos by walking into the shop too next time I go.

I wasn't asking you to confirm that CVS sells vitamin water. I was asking you to provide evidence in support of your claim that they ONLY or MOSTLY sell "health drinks" and "diabetic safe snacks." Remember, here's your comment that I quoted when posting:

 

Many CVS stores will only or mostly sell diabetic safe snacks and health drinks that each have different nutrients in it.

If you cannot support that assertion, I completely understand because it's plainly false and a bit ridiculous, but then we must ask... Why did you say it in the first place?

[john5746]

I used to buy candy there when it would go on sale. I don't recall seeing a produce section, so I doubt most of their products are healthy.

 

http://consumergrouch.com/wp-content/gallery/cvs/cvs-palatine3.jpg

[iNow]

Nor diabetic safe (especially given that image)...

[Marshalscienceguy]

I wasn't asking you to confirm that CVS sells vitamin water. I was asking you to provide evidence in support of your claim that they ONLY or MOSTLY sell "health drinks" and "diabetic safe snacks." Remember, here's your comment that I quoted when posting:

 

 

If you cannot support that assertion, I completely understand because it's plainly false and a bit ridiculous, but then we must ask... Why did you say it in the first place?

I would have to take an personal photo than.

[hypervalent_iodine]

Australia doesn't have CVS, but I'm assuming that since the online store stocks items such as these, that the physical stores stock the same kind of stuff. I could be mistaken, but I'm fairly certain that Cadcury chocolate does not fall under the banner of diet or diabetic safe food.

[Popcorn Sutton]

I really didn't want to mention this, but I currently work at CVS. I have straightened those isles for months and I can personally tell you that they have PLENTY of healthy food. They have a whole isle for nutritional shakes, and another isle for diabetic shakes and snacks.

Not to mention all the vitamins and dietary supplements they also have. They also have an entire isle for cleaning supplies, and also, for every item they do have, they also have their own proprietary items that cost a lot less and are very often on sale.

All of the items are quality controlled as well.

They also have very high standards for keeping their stores clean and their shelves stocked. It is by far the most ethical work place I have ever been employed at. The corporation itself is extremely friendly and they've done nothing but care and be very kind. The only complaint I have is that they don't pay well, like most other big companies.

[Acme]

I really didn't want to mention this, but I currently work at CVS. I have straightened those isles for months and I can personally tell you that they have PLENTY of healthy food. They have a whole isle for nutritional shakes, and another isle for diabetic shakes and snacks.

Not to mention all the vitamins and dietary supplements they also have. ...

Always some contradiction in your preface. I don't want to mention this but... I don't want to brag but...

 

But I digress...on to the nut of the matter.

 

Alas the vitamins & supplements are about on par with the Cadbury chocolate, which arguably contains antioxidants. People are as people do and there is no substitute for well-founded education and self control when it comes to good health.

 

http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=1789253

Annals of Internal Medicine

Enough Is Enough: Stop Wasting Money on Vitamin and Mineral Supplements

Three articles in this issue address the role of vitamin and mineral supplements for preventing the occurrence or progression of chronic diseases. First, Fortmann and colleagues (1) systematically reviewed trial evidence to update the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommendation on the efficacy of vitamin supplements for primary prevention in community-dwelling adults with no nutritional deficiencies. After reviewing 3 trials of multivitamin supplements and 24 trials of single or paired vitamins that randomly assigned more than 400 000 participants, the authors concluded that there was no clear evidence of a beneficial effect of supplements on all-cause mortality, cardiovascular disease, or cancer.

...

Other reviews and guidelines that have appraised the role of vitamin and mineral supplements in primary or secondary prevention of chronic disease have consistently found null results or possible harms (5–6). Evidence involving tens of thousands of people randomly assigned in many clinical trials shows that β-carotene, vitamin E, and possibly high doses of vitamin A supplements increase mortality (6–7) and that other antioxidants (6), folic acid and B vitamins (8), and multivitamin supplements (1, 5) have no clear benefit.

...

Despite sobering evidence of no benefit or possible harm, use of multivitamin supplements increased among U.S. adults from 30% between 1988 to 1994 to 39% between 2003 to 2006, while overall use of dietary supplements increased from 42% to 53% (9). ...

[John Cuthber]

Did you guys know that 90% of food in our grocery stores didn't exist 90 years ago? The only ones that I know of are milk and corn flakes. Give it another 90 years and let's see what happens.

What?

You don't buy flour, eggs, butter, sugar, meat, fruit and so on?

[Airbrush]

Alas the vitamins & supplements are about on par with the Cadbury chocolate, which arguably contains antioxidants. People are as people do and there is no substitute for well-founded education and self control when it comes to good health.

 

http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=1789253

Annals of Internal Medicine

Enough Is Enough: Stop Wasting Money on Vitamin and Mineral Supplements

Most people don't have the "well-founded" education and self control you have and you assume they have.

 

Obesity is getting worse. Look around you and see how huge people become, because they are alway hungry. Something needs to be done. Maybe invent appetite suppressants and add them to our precious processed foods, so people eat what their body needs and not more. I confess I carry around an extra 20 lbs, just because I cannot lose that weight, because to do so means I will need to cut my food consumption in half, and even eating HEALTHY food is also too much fun for me.

 

You cannot compare vitamin and mineral supplements with food that is engineered to be so appealing that many people cannot resist eating in excess. No doctor will prescribe candy to cure anything.

 

No, I'm saying that if you aren't in that income bracket then you aren't seeing any additional burden in tax dollars going to health care for others. You'll be paying what you are paying in now (that you will presumably extract, and possibly exceed, someday). Regular healthcare is being paid for out of insurance premiums.

Who pays for the medical expenses when a homeless person is hit by a car? They are taken to the nearest ER, thousands of dollars are spent on them, and they pay nothing. So who is paying for their treatment? We are thru our taxes.

 

....I currently work at CVS. I have straightened those isles for months and I can personally tell you that they have PLENTY of healthy food. They have a whole isle for nutritional shakes, and another isle for diabetic shakes and snacks.

Not to mention all the vitamins and dietary supplements they also have....

Yes, but just like grocery stores, impulse junk-food items are in your face at every check out stand.

 

CVS should remove junk foods from the check stand and replace them with healthy snacks.

Edited February 19, 2014 by Airbrush

[swansont]

Who pays for the medical expenses when a homeless person is hit by a car? They are taken to the nearest ER, thousands of dollars are spent on them, and they pay nothing. So who is paying for their treatment? We are thru our taxes.

 

It's been that way for ages. Your tax burden in this regard is actually decreased by the ACA, because there will be fewer people without insurance using emergency rooms.

 

And the context here was CVS and health foods. I hope you insurance covers any possible repercussions from moving the goalposts so violently.

[Acme]

 

Alas the vitamins & supplements are about on par with the Cadbury chocolate, which arguably contains antioxidants. People are as people do and there is no substitute for well-founded education and self control when it comes to good health.

 

http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=1789253

Annals of Internal Medicine

Enough Is Enough: Stop Wasting Money on Vitamin and Mineral Supplements

Most people don't have the "well-founded" education and self control you have and you assume they have.

 

Obesity is getting worse. Look around you and see how huge people become, because they are alway hungry. Something needs to be done. Maybe invent appetite suppressants and add them to our precious processed foods, so people eat what their body needs and not more. I confess I carry around an extra 20 lbs, just because I cannot lose that weight, because to do so means I will need to cut my food consumption in half, and even eating HEALTHY food is also too much fun for me.

 

You cannot compare vitamin and mineral supplements with food that is engineered to be so appealing that many people cannot resist eating in excess. No doctor will prescribe candy to cure anything.

...

CVS should remove junk foods from the check stand and replace them with healthy snacks.

 

Sorry if I wasn't clear. I did not mean to imply that people -in general- have well-founded education about diet and health, rather that every effort to convey that education is worthwhile. Toward that end I think shows like Dr. Oz are helpful for adults/parents and instruction on nutrition in schools and kids TV shows for the tikes. The food processors and sellers -such as CV- are not on the side of our health regardless of their propaganda. They are on the side of money. The fatter we are, the fatter their wallets are.

 

The issue of self-control in consumption is a broader problem than just food, as people expect their wants to be filled and filled now. This has become something of a birthright in the Western world beginning after WWII and I see no easy path to breaking that nut. Perhaps when we-all start running out o' stuff, we-all will start doing without stuff. :shrug:

[Phi for All]

Who pays for the medical expenses when a homeless person is hit by a car? They are taken to the nearest ER, thousands of dollars are spent on them, and they pay nothing. So who is paying for their treatment? We are thru our taxes.

 

But this isn't a result of Obamacare. In fact, the ACA makes this less of a burden.

Yes, but just like grocery stores, impulse junk-food items are in your face at every check out stand.

 

CVS should remove junk foods from the check stand and replace them with healthy snacks.

 

CVS isn't in the business of determining if you can control your impulses. The best they can do in a market economy is give choices so we can decide for ourselves.

 

This is important. Sometimes we need to step in and say, "Sorry, it's not working to leave this up to the individual, we have to cover this as a group if it's going to work at all, so here's the decree." Social Security was like that. Too many people ending up old and penniless, so we fixed it. But this isn't the best way to do everything. We do quite a bit of mandatory selection in healthcare as it is, and I'm not sure legislating against junk foods is smart. Prohibition has a horrible track record.

[Popcorn Sutton]

It really depends on what you consider junk food. I've been feeling light-headed lately (for seemingly no reason, any suggestions as to why would be appreciated). I looked up how to prevent fainting from being light-headed and it said get something sugary. I also realized that I haven't been keeping up with protein lately, so I decided that I needed something sugary and preferably with protein. It led me to a package of Reese's fast break snack size candy bars. After eating a few, it cured my symptoms. Some people might consider that junk food, but for someone who has low blood sugar and needs protein, it's a healthy option.

[iNow]

Sounds a bit like low blood pressure and/or low blood sugar. Either way, see a doctor. This is the only advice you should be willing to accept on an internet forum... someone telling you that we cannot diagnose you online and you should check with a doctor.

[overtone]

If legislation coercing people into eating only government approved food had been passed twenty years ago, we'd be stuck with trans fat margarine in place of butter (the dairy products industry having been ruined), industrially modified egg white product from battery chickens instead of whole eggs from local farms, irradiated meat full of anitbiotics and growth hormones, estrogenic leaching and bacteria coddling plastic cutting boards and other kitchenware in place of wood, and a host of other bad ideas that somehow managed to get past the eagle-eyed vigilance of an FDA and EPA that still haven't set up the endocrine influence screening of food containers and packaging mandated nearly twenty years ago.

 

In my State, Minnesota, several years ago, the rightwing factions in the State government pushed through a sales tax on stuff people eat (to avoid raising taxes on rich people, which would destroy the "business climate" - this was pre-Crash). Faced with the political consequences of taxing poor people's food to avoid taxing rich people's incomes, they tried to restrict the tax to vice food, disapproved stuff, "junk", luxury and entertainment that poor people should not be buying anyway. The various complications and controversies that soon bollixed them up (artisan breads with fruit? honey? molasses? sugar?at what point does a small loaf of sweet raisin bread become a muffin? when is a bagel a doughnut? what about chocolate milk?) provided some entertainment, but the sour and Soviet feel of the eventual muddle (entire sections of checkout cash registers devoted to various categories of packaging etc, essentially all candy and snacks taxed in every store despite the fact that a good share of it should not be under the law's technicalities, a general throwing up of hands in the face of immobile authoritarian bureaucracy) is still with us, part of the landscape.

 

It's nothing anyone else wants to imitate, trust me.

[Endy0816]

It really isn't that black and white. Organic has issues of its own. You really have to weigh the benefits and drawbacks for yourself instead of believing the marketing put out.

 

Butter has trans fats. Should we process them out to make it safer? Is the risk of food poisoning from tainted meat worth the risk of not irradiating it? How about cooking, it produces carcinogens; should it be regulated? How long is too long in the name of food preservation when people are going hungry? Are we okay with decreased yields from using more natural practices? Is the increased resource usage and associated pollution worth it?

 

I don't think any of these questions have a simple yes or no answer, but I do think society needs to take a hard look at things.

 

 

Back to the topic at hand, most numbers I'm seeing suggest tobacco sales only represented less than 2% of their total profit. Looks like a simple means of generating positive publicity for them without making a significant sacrifice. Yeah it is good and all and maybe we'll get a few more drug store chains onboard, but most the cigarette sales weren't taking place in them in the first place. Small win, maybe influencing larger sellers down the line.

 

 

[Airbrush]

It really depends on what you consider junk food. I've been feeling light-headed lately (for seemingly no reason, any suggestions as to why would be appreciated). I looked up how to prevent fainting from being light-headed and it said get something sugary. I also realized that I haven't been keeping up with protein lately, so I decided that I needed something sugary and preferably with protein. It led me to a package of Reese's fast break snack size candy bars. After eating a few, it cured my symptoms. Some people might consider that junk food, but for someone who has low blood sugar and needs protein, it's a healthy option.

Good that it works for you. However, my issue is masses of people becoming habituated to salt/sugar/fat at the EXCLUSION of nutritious foods.

 

If legislation coercing people into eating only government approved food had been passed twenty years ago, we'd be stuck with trans fat margarine in place of butter (the dairy products industry having been ruined), industrially modified egg white product from battery chickens instead of whole eggs from local farms, irradiated meat full of anitbiotics and growth hormones, estrogenic leaching and bacteria coddling plastic cutting boards and other kitchenware in place of wood, and a host of other bad ideas that somehow managed to get past the eagle-eyed vigilance of an FDA and EPA that still haven't set up the endocrine influence screening of food containers and packaging mandated nearly twenty years ago.....

"IF legislation" did what you propose, is a big IF. A panel of nutrition experts should determine what foods should be taxed more or less. Such determinations should not be made once every 20 years, but continually updated according to scientific discoveries. I'm sure an apple should not be taxed, but subsidized to make it more affordable to compete with foods with a higher "junk-index". If you had cheep apples at the check out stand, maybe people who would normally select a candy bar, would select the apple instead, because it is cheeper.

Edited February 21, 2014 by Airbrush