I hate tobacco smoke, but many of the legal strategies for curbing sales of tobacco, including this one, seem wrongheaded to me, and often even counterproductive. One particular kind of store loses a source of income, but consumers can still buy the offending product easily enough, from a competitor.

I do understand the idea that pharmacies shouldn't be in the business of selling an addicitive drug that is so hazardous to the user's health and has no countervening redeeming qualities. But the fact is, tobacco sales are customary in drugstores in the US, and because it is an especially profitable product, businesses accustomed to selling large quantities depend upon continued sales to maintain a balanced set of books.

On a related note:

A couple of years ago, one of our cherished local institutions in New Orleans, the K&B drugstore chain, was taken over by a nationwide pharmacy business, Rite Aid. Rite Aid immediately announced that alcoholic beverages would no longer be sold in the former K&B stores that they were taking over. (Out-of-towners are often surprised at the easy availability of such beverages in Louisiana ~ big beer coolers in supermarkets and pharmacies, no hours or days when sales are forbidden, etc.)

I don't remember exactly which year this occurred, but I DO remember that it was late winter, shortly before Mardi Gras. Several of K&B's largest and busiest outlets were located at major intersections along St. Charles Avenue, the main parade route; needless to say, these outlets enjoyed HUGE sales of beer, wine, and every other kind of booze imaginable during the two weeks of nightly parades, plus the all-day celebrations on Saturdays, Sundays, and the concluding Fat Tuesday. (They sold plenty throughout the rest of the year as well, of course, but Carnival Time was and is especially busy in this regard.)

Rite Aid pharmacies had never sold alcohol in any of the other US localities where they had gobbled up local drugstore businesses, and they were briefly insistent upon maintaining this nationwide policy in New Orleans. However, someone must have shown them the sales records from previous Februaries, because as the various K&B's around town reopened as Rite Aids, the beer coolers, wine racks, and liquor departments remained in place (and remain so today.)

Incidentally, when they first took over, Rite-Aid also announced that products of Coca Cola Bottlers would be discontinued, since the corporation had an exclusive contract with Pepsi. ("No Coke, Pepsi," to quote John Belushi.) For whatever unknown reason, Coke outsells Pepsi by a wider margin in the New Orleans metro area than anywhere else in the world, and that announcement met nearly as much public outrage as the no-alcohol proposal. Rite Aid had to back down on that one, too: today, you can buy both rum AND Coke at any neighborhood Rite Aid in New Orleans.