Massachusetts - City of Everett to ban tobacco sales in pharmacies..

June 11, 2010 - Starting next week on Tuesday, June 15th, smokers will find it a little less convenient to pick up a pack of cigarettes in Everett. Hoping to deliver another blow against smoking, the Board of Health on May 24 voted unanimously to ban the sale of tobacco products in pharmacies. The regulation will impact four pharmacies in the City: Walgreens, Rite-Aid, Stop and Shop and Costco (a business establishment that includes a pharmacy).

The Board of Health was interested in sending a strong public health message to the retail pharmacies in the City: by allowing the sale of tobacco in pharmacies and retail stores with pharmacies a mixed message is sent to consumers who generally patronize these pharmacies for health care services.

Everett becomes the fifth Massachusetts community to bar the sale of tobacco in pharmacies. Boston led the way in December, 2008 when it became the second city in the country — the first was San Francisco — to adopt such a ban. The Boston ban, which took effect in February 2009, was part of a larger tightening by the city of its tobacco restrictions. Similar bans on tobacco sales in pharmacies followed in Needham, Uxbridge, and Newton, according to Jason Dodd, director of the 5-City Tobacco Control Collaborative, a partnership among the health boards of Cambridge, Chelsea, Everett, Revere, and Somerville that works to develop and enforce anti-tobacco policies.

Boston is surrounded by the "Greater Boston" region and is bordered by the cities and towns of Winthrop, Revere, Chelsea, Everett, Somerville, Cambridge, Watertown, Newton, Brookline, Needham, Dedham, Canton, Milton, and Quincy. (Boston..) Uxbridge is a suburban New England town in Worcester County, Massachusetts. (Uxbridge, Massachusetts..)

Reference: Everett board bans sale of tobacco in drugstores City bans tobacco sales in pharmacies by John Laidler, Boston.com, 6/10/2010.

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