SmokingPaST Framework tool calculates impact of investments in tobacco treatment programs

The newly released Smoking Prevalence, Savings, and Treatment (SmokingPaST) Framework is a tool designed to calculate the impact of investments in tobacco treatment programs on health and medical cost savings. The framework combines what is already known about the medical costs of smoking, the health benefits of quitting and the effectiveness of different quit methods. It can be used to help guide employers, city, state and national policymakers in making decisions about how to invest funds in tobacco treatment efforts.

An article published in the September/October, 2011 issue American Journal of Health Promotion describes the use of the framework for specific populations and quantifies the significant drops in smoking rates that can be achieved and medical cost savings that can be captured by employers as well as state and federal governments through tobacco treatment and prevention programs.

Selected Findings

1. Employers - Not Hiring Smokers
An employer with 1,000 employees 15% annual turnover and a base line smoking rate of 20% who decides to not hire smokers will save $49 thousand in medical costs in the first year, $1.8 million in the first decade and $4.7 million by the end of the second decade. Additional saving would accrue from reduced absenteeism and elimination of cigarette breaks.

2. State of Ohio - Increase smokers trying to quit and quitters using best quit methods and decrease high school seniors smoking
If the number of people attempting to quit smoking every year in Ohio increased by 10%, 10% of quitters trying to quit cold turkey shifted to the best quit method, and the number of high seniors smoking dropped 10%, smoking rates in Ohio would drop to 13.4% by 2018; 8.7 million years of life would be saved; medical spending would be reduced by $8.2 billion dollars, at a cost of only $114/year of life saved and a return of $8.33 for every dollar spent on tobacco treatment. These savings would be accrued to employers ($3,3 billion), private households ($2.6 billion), the federal government ($1.1 billion), Ohio State Medicaid ($947 million) and other health care funders ($286 million). Note: The state of Ohio dropped its support for the free 1-800-QUIT-NOW telephone quit line in June of 2011, the only state in the nation to do so.

3. Nation: All smokers using best quit methods
If all the smokers in the US who try to quit smoking were to use the best quit method, which includes a combination of behavior therapy and medication, smoking rates in the nation would drop to 4.9% by 2019 (from 21% now).