Philip Morris moral dilemmas examined through utilitarian ethics

Business

Phillip Morris Troubles

This is a review of a case study about Phillip Morris. There is one reference used for this paper.

Introduction number of businesses find themselves facing legal and ethical dilemmas today. It is important to look at the Phillip Morris company and determine not only what moral issues it is dealing with, but also how these issues are concerned with utilitarianism.

Moral Issues

Phillip Morris faces a number of moral issues concerning its activities in the tobacco, beer and food industries. The tobacco division of the company has to contend with knowing their product "causes or contributes to the deaths of about 1000 Americans each day, and an average of five and a half minutes of life are lost for each cigarette smoked (unknown)."

Moral issues faced by the company's beer division include distributing a product which has been shown to cause "long-term effects on internal organs, especially the liver and heart (unknown)." Not only does alcohol affect the body over time, but driving while under the influence of the product can result in the deaths of not only the consumer, but innocent bystanders as well.

The food division of Phillip Morris has been not immune from moral issues. Not only were they producing high-fat and high-cholesterol products, but they were not informing consumers that they were using "new technologies such as irradiation, which was used to preserve foods, and genetic engineering, which was the basis of some of the new crops that its food companies used as ingredients (unknown)."

Conclusion

Phillip Morris is currently facing a number of moral issues, and its management team has the difficult job of trying to balance consumer demand against the good of the general population. While Phillip Morris argues people have the right to choose whether they consume their products, utilitarianism concerns deal with the negative impact of these products, what is right and good for the population and the consequences that will be realized from using these products.