At many CVS stores, you can check in with the Minute Clinic in the store and be seen by a nurse practitioner affordably and quickly. You can then fill any prescription you get at the pharmacy. While you are there, you can buy toothpaste, aspirin, shampoo, lipstick, and a quart of milk. But at a CVS, you cannot buy cigarettes or e-cigarettes. Instead, that space is now taken up by nicotine gum and other aids to help people quit smoking.
CVS Health Corporation announced last year that it would stop sales of cigarettes, the first major pharmacy chain to do that. The company did this despite the fact that cigarette sales added $2 billion a year to the bottom line. As a signal of the seriousness of its commitment to stopping smoking, CVS Health has resigned from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, after reports that the chamber was fighting antismoking legislation in other countries.
Committing to stopping the sales and use of cigarettes was also another move in the transformation of CVS from a drugstore and pharmacy into what can be argued is the largest healthcare company in the United States. CVS Health is now the biggest operator of health clinics, the largest dispense of prescription drugs, and the second-largest pharmacy benefits manager (a company that administers the prescription benefits for big companies and insurance plans), according to the New York Times. The Times added that the company's strategy is to be a one-stop shop for healthcare.
Just this year, CVS Health (the letters stand for Consumer Value Store, for the original discount outlet for health and beauty products) has acquired Omnicare, which distributes prescription drugs to nursing homes and assisted-living operations and bought Target's pharmacy and clinic businesses. When the Target deal is finished, CVS will operate about 9,600 retail stores, or around one in every seven retail pharmacies in the United States.