Teriyaki chicken samples at the mall, peanuts at General Beauregard’s, and even condoms at the Health Center. Let’s face it, we all love free stuff.

After dropping hundreds of dollars on textbooks, I’m confident I wasn’t the only one to excitedly thumb through the complimentary coupon books that accompanied my purchase. This semester it included Subway coupons, free Dairy Queen ice creams and best of all, an entire free week of use of a product that increases our risk of cancer by 75 percent.

Now before I send all the chain smokers searching for what sounds like a free carton of cigarettes, I’ll clarify that the coupon is actually for a free week of tanning at tanning bed salons around Athens. This coupon couldn’t have come at a worse time since cancer experts recently moved tanning beds from their list of probable carcinogens to their list of “definite causes of cancer.”

This list, provided by the International Agency of Research on Cancer, is the agency’s highest cancer-risk category and also includes radon gas, hepatitis B virus, tobacco, radium and plutonium. Furthermore, these cancer experts now regard ultraviolet radiation from tanning beds as deadly as arsenic and mustard gas.

It’s no wonder that melanoma is now the leading cancer diagnosed in women in their 20s. Regardless of this alarming statistic, frequenting the tanning bed seems to have become the norm for students across the country.

Whether they are year-round tanners or special occasion tanners, college students are spending huge sums of money on tanning salon memberships and other tanning accessories. These fees, however, may be a down payment for long-term medical bills and health risks.

I’m not writing to sound like anyone’s mother or dermatologist, and I don’t deny that I’ve been under the bulbs a time or two to get that “healthy glow” before spring break. But I’m having a hard time understanding what’s healthy about exponentially increasing my risks of getting skin cancer.

We college kids have our vices and are sometimes tempted to engage in certain activities that might not be in our health’s best interest. We may argue that tanning beds help seasonal depression or supply us with needed Vitamin D, but we should not kid ourselves by thinking that tanning is actually worth our time, money or health.

We should spend that time and money going out with friends to beat seasonal blues, and as for Vitamin D, we get more than our recommended daily amount just standing in the sun waiting for the Orbit.

I know it’s tempting to cash in on those cancer coupons, especially since one is for 24-Hour Tan, allowing you to get that bronze glow at 3 a.m., after the bars close. Before you do though, ask yourself if you’d redeem a coupon for free hepatitis B virus or half off on a dose of mustard gas, and then go for the free Blizzard at DQ coupon instead.

- Leah Bishop is a news writer for The Red & Black