State AGs Press Retailers to Drop Tobacco Products

A bipartisan group of 28 attorneys general, led by New York’s Eric Schneiderman and Ohio’s Mike DeWine, have sent letters to five of the country’s biggest retailers, urging them to stop selling tobacco products. “There is a contradiction in having these dangerous and devastating tobacco products on the shelves of a retail chain that services health care needs,” the AGs wrote in the letters, sent to Wal-Mart, Walgreens, Rite Aid, Safeway, and Kroger. “The availability of such products in a retail store that also serves as a pharmacy normalizes tobacco use.” CVS made news recently when it decided to join Target and Wegmans in not stocking such products, and 32 attorneys general wrote to commend the pharmacy chain.