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DEERFIELD, Ill. — While Walgreens Boots Alliance is testing tobacco-free stores in the U.S., but the pharmacy chain’s leader has no plans to quit selling cigarettes entirely according to an article in The Wall Street Journal.
Stefano Pessina
“The safety of our patients is very important, but we also have to do what our customers are requiring us to do,” WBA’s chief executive Stefano Pessina said in a recent interview. “We see that when we don’t sell tobacco, we have a lot of [negative] reactions.”
The issue came up at the company’s annual shareholder meeting in January and again in February, when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration called out the company for selling tobacco products to minors. That month, a group of U.S. senators sent the Walgreens chief and other retailers letters urging them to stop selling tobacco products in stores.
While it continues to sell cigarettes in the vast majority of its stores, Pessina said Walgreens is trying to help smokers quit by also making smoking cessation products widely available. Employees are encouraged to direct customers seeking cigarettes to cessation products. The pharmacy chain has also reduced the visibility of tobacco products in some stores.
“Our objective is to convince people not to smoke, so we give them a cigarette and we ask them whether they want to stop smoking,” Pessina told the Journal.
Walgreens doesn’t sell tobacco products at a test store in Deerfield, Ill., near its headquarters, as well as 17 stores in Gainesville, Fla., as part of a 12- to 18-month pilot program it started last year. It also doesn’t sell cigarettes in Massachusetts, New York City and San Francisco, which have banned pharmacies from selling them.
