Narrator: This is Science Today. A new report estimates that more than 30 thousand heart-related deaths were prevented the first nine years of California State's tough anti-smoking program, which began in 1988. The report by University of California, San Francisco researchers, represents the first time scientists have linked savings in lives to a tobacco control program. Joel Moskowitz, a researcher at UC Berkeley who has also studied smoking laws, says strong laws do have an effect on smokers.

Moskowitz: We did find a relationship that was related to the strength of the ordinance or the existence of the ordinance, such that the stronger the law, the more likely they were to have quit smoking.

Narrator: Moskowitz studied workplace smoking in particular.

Moskowitz: What we found comparing workers who worked in communities with the strongest laws, about twenty-six percent had quit smoking in the last six months and were still abstinent at the time of the survey in comparison in communities with no laws -- only nineteen percent had quit smoking during that period and were still abstinent.

Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.