CVS, the first U.S. drugstore chain to ban the sale of tobacco products, is once again taking a stand against cigarettes.
CVS and the CVS Health Foundation announced a plan to fund a five-year anti-smoking campaign that will be targeting the younger generation. The campaign, Be The First, will cost $50 million.
Be The First will incorporate educational programs and social media to help prevent the younger generation from becoming daily and lifelong smokers. The initiative will aim to accomplish its goals over the course of the next five years. Two of these goals are to reduce the nation's youth smoking rate by 3 percent and to increase the number of tobacco-free university/college campuses by 50 percent.
The campaign will be working with numerous organizations, including Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, the American Cancer Society and Scholastic Inc.
"We're partnering with experts across the public health community who have established best practices to help prevent tobacco use," said Troyen A. Brennan, Chief Medical Officer for CVS Health. "And, by establishing more public-private partnerships to implement these strategies more aggressively, we can help increase the number of people leading tobacco-free lives and move us one step closer to delivering the first tobacco-free generation."
The president of Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, Matthew L. Myers, praised CVS and CVS Health.
"Both the public health community and private sectors must work together if we are to advance a national strategy to end the tobacco epidemic, especially among our children," he said. "We applaud CVS Health for continuing to demonstrate its leadership and commitment to helping people lead tobacco-free lives with this significant investment in the health and well-being of the next generation of Americans."
CVS Health will also be convening an advisory group to help guide the initiative. The group, which will be made up of diverse members across the U.S., will be in charge of following trends and coming up with new strategies.
Smoking remains the number one leading cause of preventable deaths in the U.S. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported in 2014 that one in five American adults smoke. The CDC added that for the younger generation, if smoking trends continue at the current rate, 5.6 million children under the age of 18 will die early from a smoking-related health condition.
