Cigarettes were more likely to be available in traditional chain pharmacies and grocery stores than in independently-owned pharmacies, according to the Department of Clinical Pharmacy, School of Pharmacy at the University of California. Pharmacies are on every street corner and it is very easy for people to purchase tobacco products. Pharmacies seem to play the double edged sword, they sell tobacco products and they sell tobacco cessation products.
Among pharmacies surveyed that reported selling tobacco (90%), cigarettes were the most available tobacco product for sale (100%), followed by cigars (69%), little cigars/cigarillos (66%), moist snuff (53%), pipe tobacco (49%), roll-your-own tobacco (34%), snus (14%), dissolvable tobacco (11%) and electronic cigarettes (2%), states the Center for Global Tobacco Control, Department of Society, Human Development and Health at the Harvard School of Public Health.
New tobacco control policies have been introduced in Massachusetts which restrict tobacco product sales in pharmacies. If states do put a ban on tobacco sales in pharmacies, we need to understand that the black market on tobacco sales will probably increase. The Department of Political Science at the University of Oklahoma did a study on the effects of the enacted national cigarette sales prohibition law put into place in Bhutan in 2004. It was found that the best available evidence indicates that illegal tobacco smuggling including black market sales due to the sales ban in Bhutan remains robust.
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