Walmart to Discontinue Tobacco Sales in Select US Stores

Customers enter a Walmart store in American Canyon, California on Nov. 16, 2021. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Walmart will stop selling cigarettes across select stores in the United States, the retail giant confirmed on Monday, citing a “business decision.”

“We are always looking at ways to meet our customers’ needs while still operating an efficient business,” Walmart said in a statement to The Epoch Times. “As a result of our ongoing focus on the tobacco category, we have made the business decision to discontinue the sale of tobacco in select stores.”

Walmart operates in over 5,000 U.S. locations where it employs 1.6 million people, according to company figures. It is not immediately clear which stores will no longer sell tobacco products.

However, the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the development, said the company is set to pull cigarettes from shelves in some stores in California, Florida, Arkansas, and New Mexico.

At some of these stores, Walmart has instead introduced more self-checkout registers for customers to use. Other items such as food or candy have also been added near the front of the stores as a replacement for tobacco products, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Walmart is the world’s largest retailer; earning international revenues of $120.13 billion in 2021. While it is not the first national retailer to stop selling tobacco products to customers after CVS Health did the same in 2014, it is the largest.

The decision by Walmart to pull cigarettes from shelves comes as the retail giant looks to expand its health care business, according to multiple reports.

CVS Health said that its decision in 2014 to stop tobacco sales would result in an estimated $2 billion loss in annual revenue but overall, revenue has grown every year, owed in part to a number of acquisitions and changes to its stores.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) smoking cigarettes continues to be the leading cause of preventable disease, disability, and death in the United States and accounts for more than 480,000 deaths every year, or about one in five deaths.

A man smoking a cigarette in Washington, D.C. on Sept. 12, 2019. (Eva Hambach/AFP via Getty Images)

As of 2020, nearly 13 of every 100 U.S. adults smoke cigarettes, amounting to roughly 30.8 million adults. However, the number of current smokers—which the CDC defines as an individual who has smoked at least 100 cigarettes during their lifetime and who reported smoking every day or some days—dropped from 20.9 percent of adults in 2005 to 12.5 percent of adults in 2020.

The most recent CDC data shows Arkansas has the third-most cigarette-using adults at 22.7 percent, followed by West Virginia with 25.2 percent and Kentucky at 23.4 percent.

California, Florida, and New Mexico have among the fewest cigarette smokers.

This isn’t the first time that Walmart has removed smoking products from its shelves. Back in 2019, the retail giant discontinued sales of electronic cigarettes at its stores and Sam’s Clubs across the United States. That decision came as officials probed into a series of illnesses and deaths that were potentially linked to vaping.