From the Director...

Dr. Daniel Wueste

Business, ethics, and law: Three’s a crowd?

It happens when I read the news.  I find myself asking whether there is a lesson in the story, a take-away beyond a sense of who the bad guys are; something that casts light on how things might be better than they are, rather than a strategy for winning in a game where the victor is the one who has more than the other players when a round of play is over but nothing that would truly justify a sense of pride in having played the game.  I suppose I’ve got an old fashioned idea about life and work: although you may get dirty, when the day is done, you should be able to wash it, rather than wish it away. 

According to a recent cover story in TIME (April 12, 2014), “The Rise of Fake Pot,” the most troublesome drug problem is no longer cocaine or meth.  It’s synthetic drugs or what have come to be called “designer drugs.”  These drugs are widely available.   They “are sold in convenience stores, gas stations and head shops in heat-sealed foil packets with a bar code.”  They appear to be or are presented as being household items; potpourri, incense, bath salts or plant food, for example.  Their labels indicate that they are “not for consumption” or “not for human consumption,” though other aspects of their labeling unambiguously indicate that one can get high using them.  Which, of course, requires consumption, by, for example, snorting, swallowing, injecting or smoking the product.  

The products are chemical compounds formulated to mimic the effects of using a natural drug such as marijuana or cocaine.  Unlike these natural drugs, however, so-called designer drugs are legal.  More precisely, they are not illegal; they do not (yet) appear on lists of illegal drugs.  That’s largely because when a compound finds its way onto such a list, the makers tweak the chemical formula just enough to distinguish the new product from its now illegal predecessor.   David Martinez, the attorney for a store called Planet X in Amarillo, Texas, puts the point this way.  Having been asked about the claim that his client sold synthetic pot, he focuses on cannabinoids (synthetic compounds that mimic cannabis, are sprayed on leafy plants such as damiana and sold under names such as “Moe-Joe Platinum,” “Texas Gold,” or “Magnolia Rush”):

What I’m telling you is that there are no known cannabinoids in the product they are selling.  That stuff gets tested … If the lab results confirm that there are no cannabinoids under the Texas or federal statute, then they can legally sell the stuff.

So, his interlocutor inquires, what is it that Planet X is selling?  “[Stuff] to make a place smell good,” Martinez says. “Same stuff they sell at Walmart.”  Told that “based on the per-gram price, Planet X appears to be selling potpourri at something like $280 an ounce” —at Walmart it would cost less than 50 cents  — Martinez responds, “There must be something in it that people like.”

Planet X was located in in a strip mall.  The writer of the TIME story approached its owner, Justin Chapman.

“I’m in the landlord business,” Chapman said. “If it’s against the law, the authorities will shut them down, but if it’s not against the law, I’m going to leave them alone.” (Chapman later told Time he had changed his mind and evicted Planet X and will lease the space to a restaurant.)

Mr. Chapman gets it.  He didn’t at first.  But, it appears, upon reflection he did. 

It’s not the case that knowing that something is not against the law one also knows that there is nothing wrong in doing it.  It might be the case that one ought not do something even though it is true that in doing it one would not be breaking the law.  But suppose it were true that doing it is not illegal and also true that doing it would be profitable.  Would this pair of facts put us in a position to say, rightly, that there’s nothing to worry about?  I should say that it would only if in making business decisions profitability and legality are the only things one needs to consider, or put another way, only if the answer to the question posed in the title of this piece is yes.  Profitability and legality matter, of course, but they are not the only things one needs to consider in making business decisions.  That’s clearer, I think, in the case of the makers and sellers of designer drugs, because the likelihood of harm to users of these products is quite high (the TIME article directs attention to studies in two peer-reviewed journals, Forensic Science Review, and Academic Forensic Pathology.)  You see, the words on the package to the contrary notwithstanding, these products are supposed to be consumed.  As one person quoted in the story notes, the idea that people who buy the product called potpourri that is sold at Planet X  buy it “to make a place smell good” is beyond that pale: “It smells like dog sh-t.”  Moreover, the images and other words on the package  —“The best you’ve ever had, Moe-Joe Platinum” or   —don’t suggest fragrances for the home or bath.  Here then, it should be clear that we couldn’t embrace a principle that requires nothing beyond profitability and legality to justify a business decision.  Why?  Because that principle tells us that what the makers and sellers of designer drugs are doing is just fine—nothing to worry about here.  But that’s not true; at the very least this implication of the principle is quite disagreeable: embracing this principle how could we make good on the claim that business is not a game where the victor is the one who has more than the other players when a round of play is over but nothing that would truly justify a sense of pride in having played the game?

Earlier I said that Mr. Chapman, the landlord, gets it.   What he was doing —renting space to Planet X— was not legally wrong and, it is safe to assume, it was also profitable.  However, as he seems to have recognized upon reflection, there is more to a story like this one: things such as a sense of pride in what one is doing and working hard to keep one’s stated values aligned with one’s operational values; in a word, integrity.

Quotations from “The Rise of Fake Pot,” TIME, April 21, 2014, pp. 23-31.  Online at http://time.com/57167/rise-of-fake-pot/?pcd=pw2-FakePotHPH