
“Hey, Phil. What do you know about ethics in advertising cigarettes?
“You came rushing in here like you were announcing the winner of the Super Bowl. What have you got up your sleeve?
Morris rolled up his sleeve and took a look. “Nothing, boss, I’m as pure as the driven snow.”
“And as slippery as ice.”
“But listen to me. I’ve been studying the subject of ethical advertising for a couple of days, and it seems that the tobacco company we work for scores nearly at the bottom of the heap in this category.”
“Really. What terrible thing have we done this time?”
“I’ll tell you later, but don’t you agree we’ve been sort of an anti-truth force since we started making cigarettes back in 1924?”
“Sort of? Absolutely not. We’ve been perfectly honest about our campaign against the truth. We’ve been committed to meeting the needs of millions of people for our products, providing jobs for hundreds of thousands of people, and contributing to the economy of this great nation.”
“And those things were more important to us than the truth?”
“Look at the record, Morris my friend. Look what we did before there was a Surgeon General’s report showing that tobacco causes lung cancer. Did we go around telling people they shouldn’t smoke?”
“Of course not.”
“After the report was published, did we even hint that the scientists might be correct? Did we admit knowing that nicotine was addictive and that tobacco smoke contains hundreds of cancer-causing chemicals? Did we put cutting out those bad chemicals at the top of our R&D agenda?”
“No way. We knew it couldn’t be done.”
“That’s right. Instead, we did everything we could to persuade people to smoke our brands.”
“I know that, but should we have? In an ideal world would we produce anything that causes cancer?”
“An ideal what? Morris, where in the universe are we going to stumble upon something remotely resembling an ideal world? It won’t happen.”
Morris paid no attention. “In my version of the ideal world there wouldn’t be any nicotine or smoking at all.”
“Well, la tee dah. Until you succeed in establishing the ideal world, get used to it, my friend. We didn’t invent tobacco. We weren’t the first to design a cigarette, and we didn’t teach anybody how to smoke. The smoking habit was deeply entrenched before we came along.”
“Sure, Phil. All we did was multiply its bad effects. We pushed a deadly product on the people, especially teenagers and young adults, and were proud to do so.”
Silence reigned for about half a minute until Phil stood up and edged towards the door.
“I’d like to continue this scintillating discussion, Morris,” he said, “but I’ve got a statistics committee in ten minutes on the other end of this campus.”
“I’d like to continue this scintillating discussion, Morris,” he said, “but I’ve got a statistics committee in ten minutes on the other end of this campus.”
“Maybe you can twist some numbers while you’re there.”
Copyright © 2010 by Joyce L. Griffith
All rights reserved