CVS Spends Millions On Anti-Tobacco Campaign For Youth
CVS has decided to spend hefty amount in order to discourage the smoking habit of youth.
The biotech giant, CVS Health Corp. has disclosed to start a campaign in relation to youth antismoking. The proposed plan has a budgeted cost of around $50 million and its spread over the period of five years. The move has been taken by the biotech titan to become one of the substantial competitors in the growing industry of healthcare.
It is quite unconventional for a company to plan for a potential blow on an industry which is what the Woonsocket, Rhode Island firm is intending. The company is trying to attack the industry by advising the youth about the harms attached to smoking. According to Campaign For Tobacco Free Kids, which is a frontrunner of antitobacco group, generally only the pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer have been able to fund antitobacco initiatives by selling those products that can help in terminating the smoking habits of an individual.
The anti-smoking campaign of the company, dubbed as “Be the First,” will teach the youth about the hazards of smoking by integrating computer-generated images in the school programs. Through the help of visuals, graphics, videos, and social-media elements, it intends to compel the youth to avoid the life threatening habit of smoking. According to the Wall Street Journal, the goal of the campaign is to actively contribute to the declining smoking rate which has – after a lot of efforts – came down to 3% in the national youth smoking rate and an impressive yet struggling 10% decline in the number of new youth smokers.
In 2014, CVS banned tobacco sales from its stores. Through the step, it was entitled as the first national drugstore to take such initiative. The biotech titan has estimated that the proposed campaign will cost it, in annual sales, approximately $2 billion. It also expressed that the campaign has the support of the decision taken in 2014 and it is confident that through these initiatives, its position as a health care business will be strengthened.
The biotech behemoth’s chief medical officer, Troyen Brennan, said that a number of people have been concerned over the health related issues with tobacco but the tobacco companies see no halt in its business. Brennan said that for the national health the tobacco has always been the chief threat. According to the estimation, 480,000 people are killed by it in the U.S. alone.
The company’s antitobacco education program “Be the First” also has multiple partners including the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, the National Urban League, and Scholastic Inc. Moreover, the exorbitant antitobacco measure also has its funding by the biotech’s nonprofit division, the CVS Health Foundation and CVS Health.
Campaigns relating to the smoking cessation among the youth have been regulating for so many years now but it has not been successful in fully terminating the youth smoking. According to the American Heart Association and other similar groups, the estimated spending incurred by the industry on annual marketing is $9.6 billion.
Dr. Brennan further expressed that apart from discouraging the use of the cigarette, CVS looks forward to discourage the use of e-cigarettes among the youth. A recent study showed that among the high school youth, the e-cigarette usage rate was in the range of ten to sixteen percent while many individuals admitted that they used the battery-powered devices.
