Carroll County schools will make campuses tobacco-free in 2015, even including outdoor sporting events

The schools in Carroll County, once one of Kentucky's tobacco strongholds, have begun preparing students, parents, teachers and football fans for smoke-free school campuses starting July 1, 2015.

"This ban will apply on district property at all times, in all places and to all people, including at sporting events and inside vehicles," schools spokesman Carl Roberts writes for The News-Democrat in Carrollton. "The ban also will apply to electronic cigarettes. . . . The district is making every effort to inform students, staff and community members of the transition."

That includes signs, social media, print publications, district memos, and announcements at sporting events, Roberts writes. "At sporting events throughout this school year, cards will be distributed to spectators that provide information about the tobacco-free policy. The cards also will include information on smoking/tobacco cessation classes."

Only 35 of the state's 173 school districts are tobacco-free, but some others are planning to impose bans next year, and more may after this year's school-board elections are out of the way.

Carrollton, which once had several tobacco warehouses, was visited in 1998 by then-President Bill Clinton to explain what his administration wanted to about smoking and help tobacco farmers.