Martin Raw: Tobacco addiction researcher

bmj;385/jun04_10/q1194/FAF1faAcademic colleagues have said that the kindly and genial Martin Raw saved “hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of lives” in a 50 year career, starting in the mid-1970s at the Institute of Psychiatry’s Addictions Research Unit in London. “Martin’s legacy is literally incalculable,” said Ann McNeill, professor of tobacco addiction at the National Addiction Centre, King’s College London.In 1982 Raw cowrote and published in The BMJ the first clinical trial showing that nicotine gum was effective in helping people to stop smoking.1 In 1998 he produced England’s first evidence based guidelines on how to treat tobacco dependence, resulting in the first national network of smoking cessation services. In the following years the number of UK smokers fell from 27% of the population in 1998 to 12.9% in 2022.Raw’s innovative work also sired much needed international templates. In the latest estimate, in November 2023, the World Health Organization calculated that more…
Read Original Article: Martin Raw: Tobacco addiction researcher »