The potential of smoking cessation programmes and a smoking ban in public places

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 64,462DKK (100DKK¼E13.4).

These results are conservative as they do not include the healthcare cost saving related to reduced passive smoking. 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 costeffective strategies compared with the status quo.