The study by Caroline Fichtenberg and Stanton Glantz of the University of California at San Francisco was conducted to determine if the combination of higher cigarette taxes and a hard-hitting public-relations campaign against smoking and tobacco companies resulted in a reduction in deaths from heart disease.

In California, the study concluded that the state's anti-tobacco campaign prevented 33,300 deaths from heart disease between 1989 and 1997. The study further determined that 8,300 more lives could have been saved if state officials hadn't scaled back the program in 1992.

"Mortality from heart disease decreased significantly more in California than in the rest of the United States after the introduction of the California Tobacco Control Program," the authors of the study wrote.

The results of the study are expected to increase pressure on other U.S. states to use their share of the money from the 1998 nationwide tobacco settlement on tobacco control programs.

The study is published in the Dec. 14 New England Journal of Medicine.

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