Walking around the Grove this past Sunday for the Ole Miss vs. Memphis game I was struck by how many college students I saw smoking.

When I asked my daughter, Holly, who is a senior, she said that a large number of her friends smoke and not just at her school but at other colleges she visits.

I was amazed at this.

We hear reports all the time of how there is money from the big tobacco lawsuit that is safely banked away here in Mississippi and how that money is being spent wisely in elementary and junior high schools all over the state and how they are sure it is helping cut down on smoking. I think they may be wrong about that and I think they may be tackling the wrong age group.

Before you get up in arms about that statement, I&8217;m not saying we shouldn&8217;t educate those younger groups before they leave for college.

But I am saying perhaps the Partnership for a Healthy Mississippi needs to work on the college crowd also. And they are going to have to come up with something better than colorful posters, a dancing rat and blackened lungs in a jar.

Personally, I find it hard to believe that people who are intelligent enough to attend college and try to obtain an education and better their lives are dumb enough to start or continue to smoke.

We as parents work so hard to teach our children to not succumb to peer pressure in elementary, junior high and high school. I guess we think by the time they get to college, they can handle it. From what I saw and heard from young adults this weekend we are wrong.

It seems that many college students, especially girls, take up smoking to prevent the infamous &8220;freshman 15&8221; many students gain their first year. Since many of these kids played some type of sport in high school and now are not, there goes their exercise. Also, they soon find out how fattening drinking is and it comes as a shock to many that those eat-what-you-want meals instead of what mom served can start to add on the pounds, especially if bread, potatoes and beer are your new favorite food groups.

I went with Holly and a friend Saturday night to a local place they often go. There were so many girls standing there with a cigarette in their hand, many only barely inhaling but a bunch who had it down pat. Sadly enough they really thought they looked cool. Sunday standing in a long bathroom line I actually smelled the girl who walked up behind before I turned around. She was very attractive but she smelled of smoke. I just wanted to shake her and tell her about lung cancer, the possible link to breast cancer, the lines that would form around her mouth, how her nails would yellow and how her lungs were being coated with a viscous layer of tar.

So when you are preparing your child to head to college this is another thing to add to the list of things to discuss. And let&8217;s send word to the powers-that-be that they need to spend some of that money on our college campuses.

Christina Hall

can be reached by e-mail at

christina.hall@natchezdemocrat.com

.