QUINCY — Stop & Shop is the latest retailer to announce that its stores will stop selling cigarettes and other tobacco products later this week. The Quincy-based grocer is touting the move as part of its “commitment to community well-being.”
All 360 Stop & Shop locations in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York and New Jersey will stop selling tobacco on August 31, the press release said.
About half of Stop & Shop stores stopped selling tobacco products about five years ago with the passage of the state’s Tobacco Control Modernization Act, which prohibits health care facilities, including supermarkets with pharmacies, from selling tobacco products.
Stop & Shop stores in Abington, Braintree, Hingham, Kingston, Pembroke, Plymouth and both Quincy locations all have pharmacies, so tobacco has already disappeared from the shelves at those locations.
Some municipalities in the state have enacted their own regulations regarding tobacco sales. Brookline, for example, banned the sale of tobacco to people born after January 1, 2000, in 2020.
Which other major chains have stopped selling tobacco products?
Target was the first major retailer in the United States to stop selling tobacco products when it removed the products from its shelves in 1996.
Drugstore chain CVS Health stopped selling tobacco products in 2014, five years before a tobacco control modernization law would have forced the company to remove the products from all pharmacy stores in the state.
Grocery chain Wegmans stopped selling cigarettes and other tobacco products in its stores in 2008, Hannaford in 2020. Retail giant Walmart removed tobacco products from shelves in some of its stores in 2022.
Which major stores still sell tobacco products?
While stores with pharmacies in Massachusetts are prohibited from selling tobacco products, Walgreens continues to sell cigarettes and other nicotine products in its stores in other states.
Some Market Basket grocery stores continue to sell tobacco, as does Springfield-based regional grocer Big Y Foods. Popular wholesale stores like Costco and BJ’s also continue to sell cigarettes and other tobacco products.
According to health officials, about one in five deaths in the United States each year is due to cigarette smoking.
According to a study conducted last year by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a majority of adults in the United States support policies that ban the sale of menthol cigarettes and all tobacco products.
