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Some 8,000 people have died of smoking-related heart disease in California as a result of the state’s weakened anti-smoking campaign, a study found Wednesday. 

Medical researchers from the University of California, San Francisco, found that anti-smoking campaigns prevented about 33,300 deaths from 1989 to 1997, but that number could have included another 8,300 people if the state’s program had continued the fervor it began with in 1988. 

“The state needs to start again working aggressively,” said Stan Glantz, author of the study and a professor of medicine at UCSF. “In the mid-90s, the former governor was closely allied with Philip Morris ... and as a result, people died.” 

The initial campaign focused on older smokers, while today’s program mainly targets children, Glantz said. His study found that the smoking-related deaths correlated to cutbacks in the state’s 1992 campaign. 

But government health administrators disagree, saying California’s anti-tobacco campaign is on the mark. According to another recent study, the state’s lung cancer rate has dropped 14 percent in the past decade. 

“What that means is, clearly, fewer and fewer folks are actually smoking, said Grantland Johnson, secretary of California’s Health and Human Services Agency. “Fewer and fewer folks are dying smoking-related cancers.” 

Glantz emphasized his study was much different because it focused on the importance of prevention immediacy related to heart disease in adults. 

“With cancer, you’ve got things that change very slowly. Then when you quit, it takes several years for the cancer risk to start declining,” Glantz said. “A lot of effects on the heart are acute poisoning, so half the risk for a heart attack is gone in a year (after quitting smoking), and it’s almost all gone in three years.” 

While anti-smoking advocates are pleased to see evidence that lives are being saved, they’re concerned about a prevalence rate of smokers that’s been stuck at about 18 percent for the past five years. They also don’t understand why Gov. Gray Davis has not thrown any money from the 1998 tobacco settlement — which gives California an estimated $25 billion over 25 years — toward tobacco control programs. 

“It’s like, ’OK Gov. Davis, we know this program works,” said Kirk Kleinschmidt, of the American Heart Association. “You put the money in, and you will reduce prevalence. You will reduce consumption, and you will save lives.” 

Johnson said the current program’s funding consists of $114 million in tobacco education and $45 million for anti-smoking ads. One of its primary goals is to prevent children from starting to smoke. He said the biggest challenge now in the adult smoking population is to reach those who are hard-core addicts. 

“We have reasons to be optimistic and reason to believe and to assert that we’re going in the right direct,” Johnson said.