Walmart to stop selling cigarettes in some stores

Walmart will stop selling cigarettes in some of its 4,700 U.S. locations, the retail giant confirmed Monday.

The Wall Street Journal was the first to report on developments on Monday. He noted that some stores in California, Florida, Arkansas and New Mexico were on the list, citing anonymous sources and store visits.

Walmart isn’t the first national retail chain to cut cigarette sales even to the test, but it’s the largest. Target ended cigarette sales in 1996, and the pharmacy chain CVS Health did the same in 2014, with sales dropping out of the pharmacy for several quarters after it withdrew its tobacco products.

Decisions about disposing of cigarettes at Walmart will be made store by store depending on the particular business and market, the company said Monday.

“We are always looking for ways to meet the needs of our customers while continuing to operate an efficient business,” Walmart said in a prepared statement.

1 in 5 deaths

The decision comes after internal debate at Walmart over the sale of the product, as the retailer intends to increase its footprint in health services, the Journal noted. Cigarettes are blamed for causing one in five deaths in the United States each year.

Most of the $ 95 billion in cigarette sales in the country last year came at gas stations and convenience stores, with Walmart and other mixed retailers accounting for about 14 percent of cigarette sales volume, he added. the publication.

CVS had predicted that the lack of tobacco products would hurt annual earnings by 7 to 8 cents per share. However, global revenue has grown every year at CVS, after several acquisitions and changes to its stores bolstered the company’s healthcare offering. CVS Health bought Aetna Medical Insurance in 2017.

Walmart, based in Bentonville, Arkansas, announced in 2019 that it would leave the vaping business and stop selling e-cigarettes in its stores and also at Sam’s Clubs. He said at the time that the decision was based on a “growing complexity of federal, state and local regulations.”

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