Events reinforce dangers of smoking

Starting as early as elementary school, students are taught that smoking is bad. They learn smoking kills, smoking gives you bad breath, smoking makes your teeth turn yellow, smoking is not cool. This education continues through middle school and into high school. Yet as the years pass, more and more children and teens become smokers despite the warnings.

Somewhere along the line, smoking becomes an intriguing and exciting activity. Popular culture often shows smoking as being harmless and prevalent, and its influences reach a new, impressionable generation. And while sometime clichéd, peer pressure begins to take hold, and suddenly smoking becomes the "in" thing to do.

At JMU, 26 percent of students smoke cigarettes, according to the 2001 Continuing Student Survey results. This means approximately one in four people smoke, knowing full well that they are adversely affecting their health. What in the world would motivate such a large number of people to do this?

The survey indicated that 9 percent of smokers smoke less than one cigarette a day. These people most likely are "social smokers" — individuals who smoke very little, if at all, during the week but will smoke when they hit the town on the weekends. This phenomenon includes the ever-popular concept of "smoking while drinking."

While this practice seems harmless at first glance, it often can lead to more extensive cigarette use and a habit that is more difficult to break.

Some college students already have gone full circle, having smoked since their early teen years, and are ready to try to break the habit. Often, these people are met with a challenge because a smoking addiction is both physical and mental. The temptation to smoke while at a party, between classes or when the stress of school gets too much to handle all can trigger a swift reversal to the days of smoking.

Aside from the usual banter about the ill-effects of smoking on one's health, this year has brought new awareness to the potential dangers of smoking. Two serious apartment fires this school year were caused by cigarettes that didn't quite go out when tossed.

The Nov. 10 fire in the Commons left 48 students without a home, caused between $500,000 and $750,000 in damage, resulting in the renovation and reconstruction of the building.

In the Nov. 15 issue of The Breeze, Harrisonburg Fire Chief Larry Shifflett said the most logical explanation for the fire was a cigarette or other smoking material.

The situation that occurred Jan. 20 in Ashby Crossing also seems to be the result of supposedly extinguished cigarettes. While the cigarettes at fault reportedly were put out in an old flowerpot — in an effort to comply with Ashby management's hope that students not throw cigarette butts off balconies — a fire still began.

Of course, these are two cigarettes among the countless that are lit and then extinguished every day, but doesn't it go to show that an addictive product that can kill, cause bad breath and yellow teeth, stain fingers and start fires is just a bad idea?