It's widely known that smoking increases the risk of heart disease as well as lung cancer, and quitting smoking is strongly advised for people at risk for cardiovascular disease. Now a study from the Cardiovascular Research Institute at the University of California, San Francisco has found that a large, public anti-tobacco program both cuts cigarette consumption and reduces deaths from heart disease.

In 1989, the state of California began an aggressive anti-tobacco campaign funded by a surtax on cigarettes. Researchers collected data on the decline in cigarette use and mortality from heart disease in California and correlated it with the dates of the campaign. When they compared their findings to data from the rest of the country, they found that the rate of decline in California was greater than in the rest of the US. Consumption decreased by 2.72 packs per year and deaths by 2.93 deaths per year per 100,000 population between 1989 and 1992. The reductions were smaller after the anti-tobacco program was cut back in 1992.

That translates to 33,300 fewer deaths from heart disease in California between 1989 and 1997 than the number that would have been expected if the earlier trends had continued. The researchers concluded that a large and aggressive tobacco-control program can succeed in reducing the number of deaths from heart disease in the short run.