Larry J. Merlo, the CEO and president of CVS, will have a coveted seat in the VIP box with Michelle Obama at Tuesday night’s State of the Union address. Merlo was picked to join the first lady because CVS announced in September that all its stores would stop selling cigarettes.

Praise for the decision on social media reached as far as the White House:

@FLOTUS Congratulations and thank you, @CVSHealth. Creating a healthier future for our next generation is #OneGoodReason to live tobacco free. –mo | |

But before CVS took the tobacco high road, the company was cited a number of times for selling cigarettes to underage smokers. Between 2011 and September 2014, it racked up 178 warning letters and 14 fines for selling cigarettes to minors, according to an FDA database. The database shows that out of hundreds of retail outlets, CVS was among the top 10 most-cited chains in the U.S. last year for alleged cigarette sales to children.

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CVS certainly deserves some credit for swearing off cigarettes—the company has said that dropping tobacco will cost it about $2 billion in annual sales. But the FDA estimates that about 3,200 children smoke their first cigarette every day, and CVS was part of that for a long, long time.