Should Christians work for a tobacco company?
So Philip Morris is investing $350 million (plus the ongoing investment to pay doctors, scientists, clinical trial participants, etc.) in search of this "reduced-risk cigarette." To recruit the pharmacologists, neurologists, scientists, and engineers to its new state of the art facility, the company has launched a careers website that includes a quote from a physician saying, "To work on projects that may potentially reduce the health risks associated with smoking is both challenging and exciting."
Here are some of the health claims from Philip Morris' own website:
- Philip Morris USA agrees with the overwhelming medical and scientific consensus that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer, heart disease, emphysema and other serious diseases in smokers. Smokers are far more likely to develop serious diseases, like lung cancer, than non-smokers. There is no safe cigarette.
- Philip Morris USA agrees with the overwhelming medical and scientific consensus that cigarette smoking is addictive.
- To reduce the health effects of smoking, the best thing to do is to quit; public health authorities do not endorse either smoking fewer cigarettes or switching to lower tar and nicotine brands as a satisfactory way of reducing risk.
OK, I try to stay relatively even-handed in these posts but this just pisses me off. Is it possible to maintain a single shred of intellectual integrity and believe that working on a "reduced-risk cigarette" is going to "reduce the health risks associated with smoking?" What these highly educated men and women are doing is effectively enabling Philip Morris (who sells ~50% of the cigarettes smoked in America) to continue selling products that kill 438,000 people a year. The company reiterates on its own website that there is no safe cigarette and "the best thing to do is to quit." They acknowledge overwhelming evidence of the lethal consequences of selling their products and yet they continue to sell them. Why? Can there be an explanation other than profit? This seems to me a powerful case study for the manipulative, heart-destroying power of money (Matthew 6:24).
I suffer from the temptation to make things black and white that are, in truth, complex mysteries, but I'll ask my simple-minded, black and white question anyway -- is it possible for Christian to work for Philip Morris while passionately pursuing Jesus or is the conflict too stark, the required compromise too great? Is it possible to love your brother the way Jesus teaches/personifies and profit from his consumption of a lethal product?
Now clearly this post is not just about a hypothetical situation in which someone is considering employment with Philip Morris. What do you think about the spiritual consistency of your heart in your current job? Does it require you to compromise in ways you never thought you would?
posted by Matthew at 7:31 PM
13 Comments:
The obvious reason for not working for tobacco is that you're promoting something that is harmful to your body. So would it be too far to suggest that you also shouldn't work for any company in the fast food industry (including Chick-fil-A), snack food industry, cigarettes, soda companies, television, etc.?
HD, interesting question. As you and probably most others know, I work in marketing for arguably the world's largest snack food company. Is there some kind of "line" we can/should draw where we say "the products/services these companies provide cannot be consistent with a Christ-centered character?" Or are we simplifying this too much?
Can we as Christians work for a porno magazine? Or as a crack dealer? Why or why not?
Tobacco kills more Americans annually than AIDS, alcohol, car accidents, fires, cocaine, heroin, homicides and suicides combined. Does that put tobacco and/or the companies that produce cigarettes into a certain category?
I think one point I am trying to make is this: not all work is good. The questions I wrestle with are: 1) what makes it bad? and 2) how can we (or should we) participate in the redemption of pornography, drugs, tobacco, and potato chips?
Is there room for us to create and sell products that we know are
unhealthy? I think we need to make a distinction between the tobacco companies' history of producing products that are addictive and carcinogenic and then lying about it, and the actual product itself set within a Christian framework. I'm want to ask whether the issue here is their 'unhealthy' product, or the way in which they run their business with the only goal of increasing shareholder wealth, which in turn requires increasing revenues and decreasing costs--usually without regard for the customer. What I'm trying to say is, is tobacco the problem or
does it become the problem when paired with manipulative marketing,
greedy investors, and thoughtless consumers?
I enjoy a cigar now and then. I like to smoke a pipe and have
even smoked cigarettes before (gasp!). I am able to do so in moderation and within a community that keeps me accountable. I am not sure the product is the problem. I don't disagree that it is 'harmful' to your body but I think that argument lacks substance because as Joe Jackson says, "everything gives you cancer." We can't be putting up walls everywhere to protect us from life. Life happens and it is sometimes 'harmful'. I put the word in quotes because I realize the silliness in the argument.
But just like coffee, we can and should be critical of mass
marketing any single item and the ways in which it destroys community
and homogenizes culture. The small coffee farmer suffers when
Starbucks makes demands on its suppliers. Things are the same with tobacco and the small farmers end up getting trampled on and bought out by the major agribusinesses. In turn we get a product that is cheaply produced, chemically enhanced, and has no care or love put into the creation of it.
While I mostly agree that we shouldn't be selling or creating products that people don't
need or might be harmful to them, we need to be discerning about how we go about that and what that actually means. This product is far more unhealthy and addictive
today than it was 100 years ago. Once major tobacco companies consolidated and gained their
power (which happened over a long period of time), their product became, in their own words, "a nicotine delivery device." This is not natural to the product but rather a chemical perversion of it in order to ensure a future market and future profits. So in this case, I would say that the problem is not tobacco but the tobacco companies. It's like so many other products when marketed to the masses with no thought in mind besides the bottom line. Perhaps the problem is a system which requires a(n unreal) perpetual growth in revenue. All products will eventually become the same (in terms of quality and purpose) if the people selling them do not care about what they do or sell to people they don't know.
Just some thoughts...
if you conclude that you are against working at a cigarette company are you then against doing marketing work for them (as Matt might be asked to do)? sounds like a personal line will have to be drawn for each individual christian. as a lawyer, i could likely be asked to work on a deal for a company like this - if i turned down the request to be staffed on the deal i probably wouldn't lose my job, but it definitely wouldn't help my career. to be honest, i would probably work on it without much thought. my personal view is that, yes, these companies are certainly manipulative, but the people out there smoking don't care. looking at the language that was apparently pulled from the PhillipMorris website, they obviously disclose that cigarettes kill, but people still smoke all the time. i truthfully have a hard time being sympathetic when you hear about someone who has smoked a pack a day for his/her whole life and then wants to sue b/c they end up with lung cancer. (to clarify - i am sad that someone is hurting, but putting the blame on the tobacco company isn't completely justified).
this discussion reminds me of a debate i had with a vegan friend. he claimed that eating animal products was cruel and would always make comments of that sort to non-vegans (i.e. me). but i asked him if the vegan food manufacturers ensured that only vegans worked within their company... the company that he was giving money to and helping make a profit, and in turn putting money in their employees pockets. Employees who might be stopping by the store on the way home to by a steak. i came to the conclusion that he would have to live on an all-vegan self-sufficient island in order to never profit a meat-eater.
that is extreme, but it illustrates that so many things are tied together that it would be hard to completely separate yourself from it.
personally, i would never work in the porn industry and would even decline working on a deal relating to that industry. i have a ton of friends that i have even been in bible studies with that would never work in the porn industry... but will go to a strip club for a bachelors party.
can this thread possibly conclude that there is a clear line that shouldn't be crossed with regard to the initial question? i doubt it.
Matt Chandler quotes Habbakuk all the time saying "Whatever gets me more of Christ" and he applies it to every situation as Habbakuk mentions. Whether rich or poor, healthy or not, etc. Perhaps that should be the answer. Should Christians work for a tobacco company, or snack food, or porn, or a bookstore, etc? If it gets them more of Christ, then yes!
But then, does it ever occur that working at "shady" companies actually does get a person more of Christ? I believe if it does, it's very rare.
I think in our society, we need to probably fall more on the protective side of the fence unless we're absolutely sure that we're called to such a "shady" occupation.
Anonymous,
could you elaborate on why or why not you would or would not work for a tobacco company? porn?
As for your vegan-friend conversation, I can see the similarities but at the same time I don't think anyone here is advocating a sectarian lifestyle. As WB says, and we should all be listening, "we are all implicated in a bad economy." While this of course doesn't mean that we should withdraw completely, it does mean that we may need to think through why and how we do things. One of the most problematic aspects of our modern lifestyle (among others) is that we are not forced to think very much about what we do or how we do it.
As for your last comment, you've hit the nail on the head. We are not trying to come to any final 'conclusions' about any of the issues we bring up. Our goal is simply to start the conversation.
HD,
I'm not sure I agree that we should be more 'protective' in our lifestyles. Perhaps if we were to think more creatively about what we do and how we do it, we might be able to find ways to honor God through all sorts of (allegedly) 'shady' ventures. I believe it is possible that tobacco can honor God, along with beer, wine, and scotch whisky (not American whisky, mind you :)...but maybe some of our current business models in this sector are flawed and in need of some creativity.
I meant to say "preventative" not "protective".
Hopefully people can find employment at something which is more socially redemptive (and I say that being a smoker), but I would definitely question how the company is run (a la the dude's comment). How does it interact with farmers? How does it manipulate demand or its product? Does it advertise and how? What are labor conditions? What are the ways in which it is socially responsible given that their product is what it is? In short, the question it too abstract.
A more interesting question to me is (though here I could be charged with being equally abstract): Should Christians work for companies that are publicly traded? The notion here would be that the owners (stockholders) of companies that are publicly traded have limited liability (and therefore responsibility) and are disconnected from the locality of where the business operates. This makes it exceedingly difficult to be accountable to anyone other than the stockholders themselves and the demand for growth.
to elaborate on why i would likely not work for a tobacco company - it is mainly because in the bottom of my heart i would have no problem with them going out of business... so, i wouldn't be a good employee to say the least. that wouldn't be a good work relationship for the company or for myself. as for the porn industry, it would cripple me. lust is a huge struggle of mine already and it would be impossible to avoid the one thing i work with everyday.
to respond to dan morehead's comment regarding public companies - in fact, many privately held companies are LLC's and Limited Partnerships. it would be pretty hard to avoid working with a company nowadays just because it has a corporate structure that allows for limited liability. but just to be clear - the limited liability does not mean that the entity is shielded from liability, but rather the individual owners are, to an extent. the entity itself can be held liable, but many times after the assets of the business have been exhausted you can not pursue the individual business owners' assets.
i would argue that this feature is in fact a good thing (when not used for evil purposes obviously), because without it companies would not survive. people would shy away from investing in and owning business entities for fear of losing their personal assets. Also, rest assured that there are regulations/laws in place for wrong doings on the part of management and executives in public companies.
Yes I am aware of that, but still think owners should be personally held responsible...otherwise return and not responsibility are what drives ownership.
What if I am offered more than double my current salary, a level that is 2-3 steps higher in the hierarchy? And all of this happens in a time of financial crisis where all people are losing their jobs (and I am already not satisfied at my current job)!?!?
Anonymous -- was your post a question or an effort to provoke discussion? I think there are some obvious issues -- or should be for the Christian -- with choosing a job based purely on salary and position but I want to make sure I understand what you are asking.
Hudson's dad is right. No one should work for a company that sells things that are bad. I have and I wish I never did. Laws should have been put into place to insure that I never did. Id have to include the auto industry also in his list.
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