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American Legacy Foundation® Comments on California Tobacco Control Program's Success in Reducing Adult Smoking Saving $86 Billion in Health Care Costs  

The American Legacy Foundation applauds the California Tobacco Control Program (CTCP) for achieving powerful progress in changing adult smoking behavior - reducing adult smoking and rapidly decreasing health care costs. New research presented in PLoS Medicine, a peer reviewed open access journal published by the Public Library of Science, shows that CTCP's strategic approach designed to change social norms towards smoking and the tobacco industry is remarkably effective and generates rapid results.

These findings, achieved through an innovative methodology called co-integrating regression, mirror American Legacy Foundation findings from last fall indicating that effective smoking prevention and cessation programs could cut state Medicaid costs by 5.6 percent. The report, Saving Lives, Saving Money II, showed that America's Medicaid system could spend nearly $10 billion less within five years if all Medicaid beneficiaries who smoke, quit. Numerous studies consistently confirm that states stand to save billions of dollars and millions of lives by investing in proven effective tobacco control programs. The results from California show that the health care savings from reducing smoking are probably even larger than previously estimated.

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