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Moral Dilemmas of Tobacco Employment

Working for a cigarette company would pose a moral dilemma. While cigarette companies now operate in more regulated ways, cigarettes are highly addictive and harmful products that cause significant health damage to smokers and others through secondhand smoke. The health effects of smoking, including cancer and chronic diseases, make it the leading cause of preventable death in the U.S., killing over 480,000 people per year. Therefore, the moral intensity of working for an industry that sells such damaging products would be high.

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44 views2 pages

Moral Dilemmas of Tobacco Employment

Working for a cigarette company would pose a moral dilemma. While cigarette companies now operate in more regulated ways, cigarettes are highly addictive and harmful products that cause significant health damage to smokers and others through secondhand smoke. The health effects of smoking, including cancer and chronic diseases, make it the leading cause of preventable death in the U.S., killing over 480,000 people per year. Therefore, the moral intensity of working for an industry that sells such damaging products would be high.

Uploaded by

pamela
Copyright
© All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

Does working for a cigarette company pose a moral dilemma?

How about a weapons


manufacturer? Explain your reasoning. If your answer to the preceding questions is “no,”
is there any type of company such that your employment would create a moral dilemma for
you? How so?
Working with a cigarette manufacture would pose a moral dilemma for me. Their
products are harmful and addictive, and in the past have engaged in deceptive manufacturing and
marketing practices that later caused enormous damage and loss of life (Ashkenas, 2013).
In modern times however, tobacco companies sell legal products in much more regulated
ways and spend millions of dollars on research to reduce the harmful effects of their products
and are creating more benign alternatives such as e-cigarettes. Tobacco companies are actually
marketing against their own products, and doing so successful. The Centre for Disease Control
(CDC) has shown a steady decline in the number of smokers to this effect (Ashkenas, 2013).
The Institute of Business Ethics identified three tests to use in business decisions:
transparency, effect, and fairness. While transparency may have increased, the fairness and effect
on smokers in particular has not (Stanwick & Stanwick ,2016). Although they may perform well
morally in most internal corporate ethical decisions towards stakeholders such as shareholders,
employees, regulatory agencies, and beneficiaries of sustainability efforts, the damage they do to
the consumers and community (via second hand smoke) is significant. This is because smoking
does damage to the health of both smokers and those in their proximity. The damage ranges from
general degradation of health, to chronic diseases and subsequently a death which would have
been most likely prevented.
Looking at the effects of smoking in the U.S, the CDC (2017) cited it as the leading
preventable cause of death with more than 480,000 of death each year. These are more than
deaths from HIV, illegal drug use, alcohol use, motor vehicle injuries and firearm related
incidents combined. Smoking also causes 90 percent of lung cancer deaths and 80 percent of
chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
As such the moral intensity of decisions to work for and even let cigarette companies continue to
operate have on smokers is: a high magnitude of consequences, high probability of effects, high
proximity effect (if products are sold within the same communities) and a strong concentration
effect (Stanwick & Stanwick ,2016).
In summary, cigarette companies may have improved in the way the operate and their
transparency plus adherence to legal standards set by society such as anti-smoking bans.
However, the moral intensity of their actions on smokers is too great as cigarette smoking harms
nearly every organ of the body, causes many diseases, and reduces the health of smokers, leaves
them high hospital bills and puts pressure on national health budgets.
References
Ashkenas, R. (2013). Would You Work for a Tobacco Company? Retrieved from:
[Link]
CDC. (2017). Health Effects of Cigarette Smoking. Retrieved from:
[Link]
[Link]
Stanwick, P, & Stanwick, S. (2016). Understanding Business Ethics (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks,
CA:Sage Publications. ISBN- 978-1506303239

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