Boys are pure evil

Irish paper The Sunday Times recently reported a study in which ties to coed schools and higher drinking/smoking rates among female students were supposedly proven. The article reports that "Females attending mixed-sex schools were more likely to have tried cigarettes and alcohol than those going to girls-only institutions. The 15- and 16-year olds surveyed were almost twice as likely to have experimented with smoking if they went to a co-ed school, leading the researcher to conclude that male peers exercised a bad influence." Now, it's entriely possible that this interpretation of the study is in fact what's happening. Us fellows are a generally devious, plotting, debaucherous bunch. But the logic used here seems to me to be a flawed version of post hoc ergo propter hoc - it preceeds, thefore it caused. Just because girls in coed schools drink and smoke more than their private school counterparts does not mean that the boys at their schools are forcing/coercing them into drinking and smoking. I believe a telling statistic here would be whether smoking and drinking rates rose with boys as well as girls in public schools. If that's the case, then I feel this is a fairly obvious case of peer pressure on both sides of the aisle. The boys drink and smoke to seem cooler to the girls, and the girls drink and smoke to seem cooler to the guys. So, maybe they're both at fault, not just us immoral, corruptive guys.