Dive Brief:
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CVS Health Tuesday said it’s resigning from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (a business advocacy group and not a U.S. government agency) in light of the Chamber’s efforts against anti-smoking laws worldwide.
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The New York Times reported last week that the powerful business group had been fighting efforts in other countries that, among other measures, limited public smoking areas, and that executives from hospitals and health insurers sit on the Chamber’s board.
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CVS Health ended all tobacco sales last year and rebranded from CVS Caremark in a serious push to evolve from a pharmacy and health and beauty retailer to a more comprehensive health care company.
Dive Insight:
It’s not often that a retail company’s stated values are put to the test, and perhaps even more rare for any company to make such a decisive move as CVS Health has here. Clearly the company is taking the “health” aspect of its new brand and new mission quite seriously.
And it may have rankled that CVS Health paid $750,000 to the Chamber that, along with other dues, was used to fund the lobbying group's work to prevent anti-smoking laws in countries like Uruguay, Moldova, and New Zealand.
Meanwhile other groups are attempting to state their opposition to smoking while also defending the Chamber in some way (or at least ducking the issue). The Chamber itself, for example, has released muddled statements arguing at once against both smoking and anti-smoking laws. And the hospitals and health insurers whose executives sit on the Chamber’s board have so far largely evaded press questions about any steps they may take.
In this case it’s a retailer that has strongly matched up its brand, mission, and lobbying dollars with its reaction to the revelations about the Chamber of Commerce’s actions against global smoking limits.
