James Tugman's COMM 101 Blog

Source: https://blogs.ubc.ca/twinkledhawan/2014/10/05/cvs-bans-cigarettes/

This blog post is a response to Twinkle Dhawan’s post about CVS halting tobacco sales. I chose this post because the opinion presented is very similar to mine.

Whether or not CVS made the right decision by discontinuing tobacco sales is entirely subjective. This story shows the ethical dilemma that a massive corporation like CVS can face when selling demerit goods with high profit margins.

Ethically speaking, CVS can get nothing but praise for this decision; even it costs them billions of dollars. However, acting ethically doesn’t exactly raise investor confidence in the long run. This is a perfect example of exchanging implicit brand value for explicit profits. Twinkle’s idea of this decisions being both right and wrong couldn’t be more correct. Whether or not this is a success or a failure entirely depends on who’s looking at it.

I am curious to see how CVS does financially in the future because of this change.