Tobacco Companies and Product Safety Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Tobacco Companies and Product Safety - Essay Example The unethical activities by a firm appear in different forms and nature (Curwen and Whalley, 2005). In this report, analysis of one such case will be carried out. Hence, a brief overview of the case chosen for this study is detailed below. The case entails about the significance of product safety and the role played by companies in managing these safety standards. The case highlights a real life incident of 2004 where the US district court ruled eminent tobacco manufacturing and marketing companies such as Liggett, Philip Morris and Reynolds to pay a hefty fine of $ 280 billion if the US Department of Justice (DOJ) proves that these companies are continually deceiving the customers despite knowing the risks of smoking and its addictive nature. The case also highlighted about the fact that tobacco manufacturing companies have formed a committee so as to carry out research and developmental works on the adverse effects of Tobacco. However, the committee deceived people by denying the f act that smoking causes cancer or any other type of health effects. Ironically, research carried out by other researchers clearly showcased that smoking did causes cancer. Furthermore, the case also made it evident that Tobacco companies advertised that nicotine is not an addictive material and even campaigned to target teenagers. One of the key findings from the case was that tobacco is a product that kills around 400,000 American people in a calendar year. Regarding this matter, DOJ claimed that it is the duty of the firms to design a safe product and at the same time test its quality before launching in the market. Even these companies have also intentionally not warned the customers about the ill effects of nicotine consumption. Hence, the case makes it evident that it is a sheer violation of the ethical norms and morality of business for such kind of finds is a subject of question. This report seeks to investigate the ethical and moral issues associated with the selling of good s in the market and along with that moral and ethical issues will also be highlighted. The duty of a company towards its customer is another vital area which will be covered during the course of the study. In addition, theories and literature pertaining to this area will be highlighted in the study in order to strengthen and justify the claims made in the study. The study will begin with a brief summary of the duties that a company has towards its consumers. Duties to Consumer Ethics have been defined as one branch of philosophy that deals with the systematization and recommendations related to the conception of right or wrong. It helps in addressing to the issues that are arising in moral diversity. Now the question arises that what is morality. Morality can be described as a systematic procedure that helps to differentiate between what is right and what is wrong. Moral theories provide exact framework for analysing, discussing and finally evaluating all the moral disputes in very reasoned manner. As mentioned earlier, it is the emergence of globalization which has lead to increase of the need of business ethics. Generally an organization has three main goals: One being incur of high profits, the second being responsible environmentally and the third one being responsible socially. In order to attain such goals, it is significant that the organizations perform certain responsibilities