A recent online New York Times interview shows that college students understand the harms associated with smoking. But the article also offers a glimpse of mental schizophrenia when it comes to college students and risky behavior.

While the article shows these students recognize the dangers of smoking, it also reveals that almost none understand the dangers of sexual promiscuity. When it comes to smoking, one student “cannot . . . fathom why someone could—in the face of all the medical evidence that smoking literally kills—take up this habit.” But when it comes to sex, that same student admits wanting to sleep with 14 people before marriage.

It is not surprising that young people want to have sex: that desire has been around forever. Instead, it is disturbing that these students do not recognize how much more dangerous sexual promiscuity can be than smoking.

Smoking, no doubt, has its horrible effects. But whereas one must be exposed to countless numbers of cigarettes over an extended period of time to feel their effects, one must only sleep with the wrong person once to be exposed to STDs like HIV, AIDS (categorized by many as an epidemic), hepatitis, and HPV (which can lead to cervical cancer).

In fact, the Centers for Disease Control estimate that 1 in 4 women between the ages of 14 and 19 have an STD. Not to mention that sex may, even despite our best efforts, actually produce what God intended it to—a baby. The lust for pleasure, it seems, skews the perception of risks.

While some may applaud the students’ aversion to smoking, these people, like the students, overlook a simple, important point: one or two cigarettes cannot change your life forever; one or two one night stands can.