According to information provided from a the results of a survey taken by the JMU Health Center that was published earlier this year, eight out of ten JMU students don’t smoke, which means that two out of ten do, or one in five. Many of the people who have been around JMU have seen the way JMU smokes. Seems that almost everyone has their Marlboro Lights and their Camel Lights, and is busy puffing away. So a number of people scoffed at the statistic (which was from 1999) and said that it HAD to be more. And what do you know… they were right. According to the 2001 Continuing Student Survey, taken more recently by a different department, about 26 percent of JMU smokes, which means about one in four. This is still not consistent with what we perceive (I’d say at least 30 percent smokes), but it’s at least more in line with the number of people that really do smoke. Sometimes I wonder, judging by the amount of stuff in the ashtray shown here, whether JMU ought to just set up a cancer unit in the Health Center. Probably would do pretty well, too, considering all the smoke on this campus. Still, for the “Joe Camel” generation, this is what happens when a cartoon camel goes around smoking all the time.
