One of my peers, Rachel Meadow, wrote an interesting ethics article on CVS’ recent policy change to exclude the sale of cigarettes from all their stores. In her post, Rachel argues that this is an example of Ed Freeman’s stakeholder theory. She says that by cutting out cigarette sales CVS will be losing $2 billion in sales per year and so “this decision doesn’t agree with Milton Friedman’s idea that when in business, the main goal should be to legally maximize profit.” I believe, however, that CVS’ decision had nothing to do with ethics at all, and everything thing to do with maximizing profit. CVS would not have cut a huge source of revenue purely for moral reasons. Rather CVS saw an opportunity to be gained and acted upon it. Although they lose a large source of revenue by eliminating the sale of cigarettes, the removal allows them access to a new, and potentially much larger market—the health care market. CVS currently operates over 880 health clinics, and is expanding. With the introduction of Obamacare, the face of health care in the States is changing and CVS hopes to capitalize on this new and growing market. Selling cigarettes would be in direct conflict of its plan to re-brand itself as a healthcare provider, and so CVS chose to cut out cigarette sales in order to gain profit elsewhere, all whilst appearing to be ethically superior.