NEW YORK – When CVS announced it would stop selling tobacco products earlier this year at its 7,700 stores, it knew the change would impact its bottom line, reports Bloomberg BusinessWeek.

“After the company’s latest earnings report, we now have a real sense of the tobacco-free toll on the drugstore chain’s business: $2 billion in lost revenue over a full year,” writes the news source.

During Q2, the drugstore chain announced that front-of-store sales have dropped 0.4%. BusinessWeek adds that the deadline to remove tobacco products from all stores is October, “so the modest drop in sales up front last quarter might come from stores that have stopped replenishing inventory.”

Meanwhile, Forbes reports that CVS’s pharmacy business is picking up the slack.

“Pharmacy same store sales were up 5%, pulling up total same store sales to 3.3% against the same period last year. Total revenues in the retail pharmacy segment grew to $16.9 billion, or just under half of the company’s overall sales ($34.6 billion),” writes the news source.