Don't Ban Cigarettes in Drug Stores

The progress made in the last 25 years in reducing tobacco use is a great public health success story. Education has played a major role in that success, and so have restrictions that have made smoking Chesterfield cigarettes socially unacceptable. Bans on smoking in the workplace, in restaurants, bars and other public places, justified by concerns about secondhand smoke, have helped convince millions of smokers to kick the habit.

But there are limits to the strategy of combating smoking by harassing nicotine addicts. A bill before the state Legislature prohibiting cigarettes from being sold in pharmacies isn't about protecting non-smokers, it's about annoying smokers.

The bill, based on local prohibitions in Boston, Southborough and other communities, wouldn't just apply to the neighborhood pharmacy. It would ban cigarette sales anywhere health professionals are employed, including grocery stores or large discount stores that include pharmacies under their roof.

Supporters defend this proposal with one of the more lame legislative rationales: to "send a message" that smoking is bad for your health by removing tobacco from pharmacies. Sen. Susan Fargo, D-Lincoln, who filed the bill, calls it "counter-productive" to sell cigarettes where prescriptions can be filled.

Please. Smokers are not stupid. They know cigarettes are bad for their health - they've heard it all their lives and see it printed on every package. They don't think for a moment that cigarettes are health products, any more than they think the cosmetics, candy, greeting cards or hundreds of other products sold in most drug stores are good for their health.

If lawmakers think it's their job to decide which products are consistent with a pharmacist's mission, maybe they'd like to prohibit them from selling anything that doesn't relate directly to health - and watch hundreds of stores go out of business.

A law is not a message. It is a government-imposed restriction on the rights of individuals. Legislators' disapproval of the choices some people make to purchase a legal product does not justify their putting arbitrary and pointless limits on where that product can be sold.

The bill was endorsed last week by the Public Health Committee, but we hope it goes no further. The state Legislature should have better things to do than tell business owners what they can sell and "send messages" of disapproval to the citizens they