The Editor,
The organization Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada says B.C. is the only remaining province that still allows tobacco products to be sold in pharmacies and in grocery stores with pharmacies.
I consider this to be an embarrassment. I see drug stores that sell cigarettes at their front door and are part of B.C.’s smoking cessation program, which is offered out of the store’s pharmacy in the back of the store. The hypocrisy of this is that they make money doing both.
Selling tobacco products makes them enablers to the nicotine addiction, which is not a quality we expect from a pharmacy. Tobacco products are directly responsible for the deaths of more than 430,000 people in North America every year.
Smoking is an addiction that is as powerful as that of heroin and cocaine. I have an old school chum who was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. His wife smoked with him right to the end and, despite his death, she still smokes.
A motion has been introduced into the B.C. Legislature to have cigarettes removed from pharmacies and grocery stores that have pharmacies in them. I encourage your readers to contact their local MLA to urge them to support this legislation when it comes to a vote.
L.C. Levasseur, Burnaby
