So the local Twitterverse has exploded with commentary on CVS’s decision to stop selling tobacco products, even though it will cost the chain $2 billion of its roughly $125 billion annual revenue.

Ted Nesi puts it in context of the company’s move toward the health-services space, what with the MinuteClinics that it announced an intention to open, in November.  In Ted’s telling, it’s a peer-pressure, good-for-the-image thing, perhaps to defuse some of the opposition that had the clinics on the receiving end of Rhode Island’s infamous licensure blockade back in 2005.

Amy Payne, from Heritage, proclaims it as evidence that corporations can do the right thing without government coercion.

Of course, it’s also possible that the company has been given reason to believe that the government is preparing to change the rules of the game.  One indication of that possibility is House bill 7166, which would prevent any “health care facility” from having a license for tobacco sales “issued, renewed, or maintained.”

It’s win-win. The government makes a threat, and the company gets to respond to that threat by shooting for some good publicity.  The only losers are consumers buying the legal product from their local stores, taxpayers who find the government shifting the tax burden to other collections than cigarettes, and company shareholders whose stocks lose value to the extent that the company can’t continue selling a profitable product while also branching out into new healthcare services.