Anti-smoking campaign saves California $86b

California's large-scale tobacco control campaign has saved $86 billion in healthcare costs in its first 15 years, US researchers said on Monday.

The $86 billion reduction in health costs, based on 2004 dollars, represents about a 50-fold return on the $1.8 billion California spent on the program, they said.

"The benefits of the program accrued very quickly and are very large," said Stanton Glantz, director of the University of California San Francisco Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education.