Dollar General’s Secret to Success

Dollar General’s secret to success is cigarette sales and that is disappointing to me. We have a Dollar General near my home in St. Marys and it has been doing well. I see cars in its parking lot at all times of day and night and have stood in line at the register many times, not as long a line as there is in Walmart but a line just the same. This particular Dollar General is close enough to have caused me to put my blinker on a block too early for my turn off from the main drag here on my way home. I like how the cashiers always ask about donating my change to a Literacy charity or more recently St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. I like to think of the Dollar General as a bit more upscale than the Flash Foods and other convenience types with gas pumps included. The Dollar General also has a sales flyer and I like getting a good deal as much as anyone else. But now that I read they are upping their profit selling cigarettes I feel sad because I am going to lose the convenience of stopping by there for last minute things and things I've inadvertently left off my regular shopping list. Cigarettes have harmed so many of the people I've known, loved, and even despised. Smoking is so harmful and I can choose not to support it, even though I know addiction is complicated, by going down the road a little further to the Dollar Tree.