The potential of smoking cessation programmes and a smoking ban in public places: comparing gain in life expectancy and cost effectiveness.

BACKGROUND

Interventions aimed at reducing the number of smokers are generally believed to be cost effective. However as the cost of the interventions should be paid up front whereas the gains in life years only appear in the future--the budgetary consequences might be a barrier to implementing such interventions.

AIMS

The aim of the present paper was to assess the long-term cost effectiveness as well as the short-term (10 years) budget consequences of cessation programmes and a smoking ban in enclosed public places.

METHODS

We develop a population-based Markov model capable of analyzing both interventions and assess long-term costs effectiveness as well as short-term budgetary consequences and outcome gains. The smoking cessation programme model was based on data from the Danish National Smoking Cessation Database (SCDB), while the model of the smoking ban was based on effect estimates found in the literature.

RESULTS

On a population level the effect of a smoking ban has the largest potential compared with the effect of smoking cessation programmes. Our results suggest that smoking cessation programmes are cost saving and generate life-years, whereas the costs per life-year gained by a smoking ban are 40,645 to 64,462 DKK (100 DKK = €13.4). These results are conservative as they do not include the healthcare cost saving related to reduced passive smoking.

CONCLUSIONS

Our results indicate that smoking cessation programmes and a smoking ban in enclosed public places both in the short term and the long term are cost-effective strategies compared with the status quo.