7 Dividend-Rich Sin Stocks to Buy Now

Pop culture has always loved the bad boy. From James Dean's Jim Stark in Rebel Without a Cause to Harrison Ford's Han Solo of Star Wars fame, everyone roots for the lovable rogue. But that's generally not true in the stock market, where "sin stocks" or "vice stocks" often get the stink eye.

Investors, and particularly large institutional investors, have reputations to manage. Pensions and endowments, in particular, increasingly have environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) mandates that prohibit them from investing in industries that are politically incorrect or deemed to be socially harmful.

In the past, this has generally meant vice stocks such as tobacco, alcohol, tobacco, gambling and even defense companies. (No one in polite company wants to be branded as a merchant of death.) But today, the net is cast a little wider. Oil and gas stocks are now personae non gratae in many ESG-compliant portfolios, as are opioid-producing pharmaceuticals. Companies with a lack of diversity on their boards of directors are also often singled out.

Of course, if we take this to an extreme, nearly any industry could find itself blacklisted. Coca-Cola () and PepsiCo () contribute to the obesity epidemic. Twitter () and Facebook () have become mediums for hate speech, and Alphabet () tracks a scary amount of data on its users

* Distributions are similar to dividends but are treated as tax-deferred returns of capital and require different paperwork come tax time.