The 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.

During the California Tobacco Control Program's first 15 years it cost $1.8 billion and saved $86 billion, a 50-1 return on investment. These savings started to appear within two years of the beginning of the program, and reached 7.3% of total health care costs at the end of 15 years. With such a profound return on investment, California's commitment to tobacco control is a leading example of what to do - not only to save billions of dollars in a short period of time in medical care costs, but to give Americans the resources and help they seek to quit.

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 millions of lives and billions of dollars 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.