Quote Originally Posted by Mateo View Post
For the nine months ending 9/30/2013, CVS Caremark was at $32 Billion in sales with Gross Profit of just over $6 Billion. I'm saying that the $2 Billion in Gross off the cigarettes probably nets them a few million off that product which is minuscule compared to the overall profit margin of the company. They may be a loss leader for other higher margined products but only time will tell. This is when $2 Billion is "not much"......when it's viewed in the entire picture of this company.

Edit: Those numbers were for three months. For the nine months ending 9/30, they are at $93 Billion in sales with $17.5 Billion in Gross Profit. The $2Billion is less than 2% of their gross sales.
You seem to be co-mingling economics with politics or at the least economics with "political correctness". Alcohol costs society more in terms of health, safety and social costs than cigarettes...yet they did not stop selling alcohol. I think the real story is that by not selling that 2 Billion worth of FDA approved smokes the children will suffer as each state affected will recieve fewer education dollars in relation to the tax collected.

Conclusion: CVS hates kids and wants them to be stupid.