Walmart to stop tobacco sales in some U.S. stores

Customers wait in line outside a Walmart Supercentre store on Wednesday, April 7, 2021, in Miami. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)

Walmart Inc will stop sales of tobacco products in some of its more than 5,000 stores across the United States, the world's largest retailer said on Monday.

The company did not disclose how many stores would be affected by the move, but said it would not be exiting the category entirely.

The markets in which cigarettes are being removed from stores include California, Florida and New Mexico, according to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the news.

Walmart has rolled out a design with more self-checkout registers and other items such as grab-and-go food or candy near the front of the stores in place of Marlboro, Newport and other tobacco products, the Journal reported.

CVS in 2014 became the first U.S. drugstore chain to take cigarettes off the shelves, while Walmart halted sales of e-cigarettes and electronic nicotine delivery products at its U.S. stores a few years later due to growing regulatory complexity and uncertainty.

Several Democratic U.S. senators have urged Walmart and several other retailers to stop selling all tobacco products.

(Reporting by Praveen Paramasivam in Bengaluru; Editing by Aditya Soni and Krishna Chandra Eluri)