Smoker Advisory: Don’t Go to Wegmans
I personally have never been to a Wegmans grocery store, but next time I pass one, I might just pull over to check it out. My curiousity was piqued this morning. While scanning through a garden varietyof press releases, I noticed this stunner from the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids:
“The Wegmans supermarket chain has taken an extraordinary step to protect public health by announcing that effective February 10, 2008, it will stop selling cigarettes and other tobacco products in all of its stores.”
Huh? Seriously? The Rochester-based chain has 71 stores located throughout the Northeast. There are two in northern Virginia– Sterling and Fairfax–and several more DC-area locations in development. I called the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids to see if the decision was unprecedented. Apparently, it was. “To the best of our knowledge, no other grocery chain has done this,” said the group’s spokesperson Joel Spivak. (He mentioned that some organic grocery stores have gone tobacco-free; but no large chains.)
The Wegmans announcement was made Friday. The press release included a brief comment from CEO Danny Wegman: “As a company, we respect a person’s right to smoke, but we also understand the destructive role smoking plays in health.”
(My thoughts still: Huh? Seriously?)
“I called Wegmans to find out more about it,” Spivak told me. “We never had a campaign [to get grocery stores to stop selling tobacco products]. No one knew this was coming. We congratulated them, and so did every other public health association.”
10 Responses to “Smoker Advisory: Don’t Go to Wegmans”
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January 7th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
Ummm… huh? The only reason I can think of that Wegman’s ceasing nic sales would have any positive impact on children smoking, is if they previously were the kind of place you could buy cigarettes underage.
Will they stop selling Doritos and Coke in solidarity with the Campaign to End Obesity too? I suspect fat kills more people than nicotine. Let’s hope they do the right thing.
January 7th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
Are you really comparing Doritos and Coke to cigarettes? In moderation, Coke and Doritos are not directly harmful to your health, are they? They’re not great, but eating doritos now and again, or having a Coke isn’t going to make you obese.
Maybe Wegman’s just doesn’t want to contribute to people smoking any longer. I don’t see anything wrong with that.
January 7th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
I could say the same about cigarettes actually, or alcohol, or anything else that’s not immediately lethal. Do you think one smoke a day would be more harmful than one big mac a day? Obesity, and the consequent health affects, is actually huge health problem for this country.
Honestly, I don’t care one way or the other if they sell cigarettes. But I think comparison to junk food is valid,
because I can’t think of a reason why this will cause even one person to quit smoking. It is basically a moralistic position, and that’s their right, but as far as having any impact on public health, there will be none. The gas station next door sells them.
January 7th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
frankly, i don’t think that “one big mac a day” is eating junk food in moderation.
obviously one big mac a day is more harmful to your health than one cigarette a day. but how many people do you know who smoke just one cigarette a day?
January 7th, 2008 at 6:12 pm
Whole Foods is tobacco-free, and they have well over twice as many stores as Wegmans. Still, a great thing.
January 7th, 2008 at 10:40 pm
when i was 13 my friends and i got cigarettes from the giant in montgomery village, a nice start to a 20 year habit of smokign that has sickened and plagued me since. so yeah, get cigarettes the hell out of grocery stores. adults should be allowed to smoke but private businesses deciding not to sell them should be commended and supported. *sheesh*
January 8th, 2008 at 9:16 am
sara.h, can you really not think of any kids who who eat at McDonalds about every day? Or drink several cans of soda every day? Or several bags of chips? I can think of a lot more who do that, than smoke anything.
But that’s a tangent. As I said before, I just don’t see what a grocery store selling or not selling butts has to do with public health. If they used to sell to minors, then they should be chastised for that. If they didn’t, then the adult smokers who used to buy cigs there will simply go somewhere else.
January 8th, 2008 at 10:25 am
Whole Foods may have twice as many stores and be tobacco-free, but that doesn’t make this announcement any less significant. It may be opinion, but there really is no other grocery store that compares to Wegmans in terms of variety, price and convenience. This is a huge frickin corporation that is choosing to flat out stop taking money from customers for a specific product that they could profit from. That’s pretty noble.
January 8th, 2008 at 10:50 am
I honestly think that because there are only a handful of Wegman’s stores in the area the full effect of this as a public health issue isn’t clear. In the area where I grew up, and where my family still lives, Wegman’s is THE local supermarket. There are 3 Wegman’s all within 5 miles of my parents’ house. Imagine the effect if Giant and Safeway stopped selling cigarettes and then deny that it is significant.
Will people go elsewhere to by their cigarettes? Yes. Does that diminish the significance of a major supermarket refusing to carry tobacco products? Not at all.
January 9th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
Well, selling cigarettes is also a big hassle, with them being locked up and everything, checking IDs, legal requirements, etc. And I don’t imagine cigarette inventory turns over like it used to. I imagine this is just a business-efficiency move marketed as being altruistic or socially responsible, like Ikea’s charging for plastic bags.