Keep Tobacco Stocks

On Tuesday, January 12th, the Michigan Student Assembly (MSA) passed a resolution favoring divestment of University funds from tobacco stocks. Accordingly, MSA will recommend that the Board of Regents create a committee on tobacco divestment to build consensus on the issue between faculty and students. Currently, the University has approximately one percent of its total $2.5 billion stock portfolio invested in various tobacco companies such as Philip Morris.

MSA’s decision and, indeed, the whole debate surrounding the University’s tobacco holdings exemplifies another case of political correctness in action and health fascism run amok. Those members of the University who are lobbying for divestment are simply do-gooding liberals who wish to hop on the nation’s anti-smoking bandwagon.

Many of those in favor of divestment compare the University’s tobacco holdings to those investments it made in companies which did business with the apartheid South African government of the 1980s. Back then the University chose to divest itself of those holdings on the grounds that they were morally and politically reprehensible. Of course, comparing the tobacco industry to the racist South African government of the 1980s is absolute nonsense.

Tobacco is a legal substance and the tobacco industry is a legitimate business that employs millions of hard-working Americans. There is nothing inherently evil about tobacco use or the companies which deal in the tobacco trade. Those who use tobacco products are not immoral nor are they victims, they are Americans exercising their freedom of choice. Tobacco companies are simply participants in the free market system who provide a supply of goods which meet a demand.

The University should direct its investment portfolio according to economic motives, not politically correct dogma. If the tobacco stocks get eliminated, what’s next? Should the University not invest in the beef industry because it violates animals’ rights, or because red meat is allegedly bad for the heart? Should the University not invest in the alcohol industry because some people become alcoholics? Perhaps the University should not invest in the automobile industry because cars pollute our precious mother Earth and Al Gore thinks they’re bad.

If certain members of the University community cannot sleep at night knowing that the University is making money off that pack of Marlboros Joe Six-Pack just bought at the local Quickie Mart, we suggest they worry about more pressing campus issues. Perhaps they should examine real moral dilemmas, such as using a form of racial discrimination in the admissions process. After all, the University’s admissions process has more in common with apartheid in South Africa than it does with the tobacco industry. MR

This article was published in the 20 January 1999 edition of The Michigan Review (Volume 17, Number 6).
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