The Associated Press

LOUISVILLE - At least 39 Kentucky schools either own or lease a federal tobacco quota, and anti-smoking advocates say that sends a mixed message to students.

Of the 39 schools, 14 have students involved in producing tobacco, according to a statewide survey of school tobacco policies, done by the University of Kentucky. The other schools did not specify for the confidential survey how their quotas are used.

Schools having tobacco quotas is a phenomenon that resulted from school consolidations in the 1970s and 1980s, said David Coffey, a Western Kentucky University agriculture professor.

School officials in some districts that have tobacco quotas but ban student smoking defend that seeming contradiction. They say that even though tobacco farming is declining in Kentucky, burley remains an important crop and that some students need to learn how to grow it.

Some also say the skills learned in growing burley can be used with other crops.

"We do anything and everything we can do to try to keep the kids from smoking," said Shannon White, principal of Montgomery County High School, one of the schools with a tobacco base. "But I don't perceive teaching them how to grow it as encouraging them to use it necessarily."

White and school officials in Mercer, Oldham and Shelby counties said they are reducing their focus on tobacco farming and are shifting their agricultural programs to include alternative crops.

"We're encouraged and glad to see schools taking a pretty serious look at this and trying to move away from it," said Menisa Marshall, spokeswoman for the American Lung Association of Kentucky. "But we're concerned it really sends a mixed message to young people."

Marshall said the "mixed message" is "not to use tobacco, that it's bad and hurts people, but on the other hand they see it in a school setting and the school profits from this."

Ellen Hahn, a UK nursing professor who led the study, sees a conflict of interest in teaching tobacco farming and health risks of smoking.

About 690 public and private high schools and middle schools responded to the telephone survey that contacted 1,028 of Kentucky's 1,271 schools, which was done for the Kentucky Department of Public Health.

The survey also found that 58 percent of schools that responded allow employees to smoke outside, while 99 percent ban smoking indoors for employees and students, and 97 percent ban smoking anywhere on school grounds for students.

The study also revealed that at 72 percent of schools, officials reported that school safety officers or law enforcement officers rarely or never enforce laws governing tobacco use and possession laws.

"This shows that we have a long way to go in trying to change the pro-tobacco climate in Kentucky," Hahn said.

Kentucky has the nation's highest smoking rate and also leads the country in several smoking-related diseases, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Statewide, 22 percent of middle school students and 37 percent of high school students, are current cigarette smokers, according to the CDC. That's far above the national averages of 9 percent for middle schools and 29 percent for high schools.

However, none of the 10 students working last month in a greenhouse behind Oldham County High School smoked. All of them said they are college-bound and have grown tobacco as part of the school's agricultural education curriculum.

Around the end of this month, the students, who are volunteers, will help plant tobacco on an acre or less of land.

The school's tobacco quota is 2,400 pounds. If the entire quota is produced and sold, it would yield about $4,700 based on last burley season's average price.

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Information from: The Courier-Journal