A cashier works for a large drug store chain. This person during a normal shift, rings up alcohol, cigarettes, lottery tickets, junk food, etc. How much responsibility for supporting addictions and unhealthy behaviors does this person accrue karmically by simply being a low level “cog in the wheel” of a large corporation?

This is extremely difficult to quantitate because it becomes an exercise in hair-splitting. It is certainly the case that a clerk that handles many kinds of goods, some of which have a destructive potential, is not intending to be a willing participant in the destruction of others and simply see it as their choice, their decision to indulge in use of those products or not, and it is not their doing. But in actuality, they are a link in the chain that makes it possible for the person to harm themselves and so they are a contributing factor in aiding and abetting their destruction, although to a minor degree compared to the manufacturers of such products to keep them in existence, to market and promote them, and create the supply chain to spread the scourge as widely as possible, and so on. So the clerk in a store who may sell cigarettes occasionally will have less karmic culpability than the members of the corporate body creating the products and the salesforce and the advertisers who promote its use, but still they are not free and clear because they are participating along the way at the point of distribution, and it is through their contribution and that of many others that the enterprise continues. Without a delivery to the customer, the enterprise would fail and people would not have the means to harm themselves no matter what their inclinations might be. So in one sense, from one perspective, it is a small cog in a large machine to be a salesclerk in the chain of events, but every cog in the machine becomes at some point an essential one and the choice to participate is taking on that role, and if everyone were to say "no," that would illustrate their power is quite real in determining what might happen or not. Ultimately what happens is that their participation goes on record, so instead of the case being, "I’m not going to take that job because I don’t want to be a conveyer of harmful substances," and someone else does it, at least the karmic consequences will go to that someone else. By saying, "If I don’t do it, someone else will," and stepping into that role, they are taking on the karma directly, so it becomes a choice, the karma has their name on it and will be visiting them in their future.