From the birth of the smokers’ clinic to the invention of Nicorette: Problematizing smoking as
addiction in Sweden 1955-1971
Engelsk titel: From the birth of the smokers’ clinic to the invention of Nicorette: Problematizing smoking as
addiction in Sweden 1955-1971
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Författare:
Elam, Mark
Email: mark.elam@sociology.gu.se
Språk: Eng
Antal referenser: 0
Dokumenttyp:
Artikel
UI-nummer: 15013131
Sammanfattning
AIM - To discuss how scientific confirmation of cigarette smoking as a major contemporary drug
problem during the 1980s was preceded by a rising tide of clinical and pharmaceutical innovation
dedicated to treating smoking as a problem of addiction. BACKGROUND - This current of innovation,
commencing already in the 1950s, carried the smokers’ clinic and nicotine replacement therapies
(NRTs) into the world, both of which were originally invented and pioneered in Sweden. It is argued
that both of these inventions were vital for advancing the problematization of smoking as a matter of
nicotine addiction. While the British doctor Lennox Johnston is well-known for his early attempts to
demonstrate the reality of smoking as nicotine addiction through auto-experimentation, the historical
significance of Börje Ejrup’s founding of the first smokers’ clinics in Stockholm in the late 1950s has
not been widely commented upon. Attempting to remedy this situation, the rise and fall of Ejrup’s
clinics deploying lobeline substitution therapy as a cure for ‘nicotinism’ is outlined in the main body
of the paper. FINDINGS - Although the clinical treatment of smoking as addiction lost momentum
during the 1960s, the invention of Nicorette gum in southern Sweden at the end of the decade
provided renewed impetus. Commencing in Helsingborg and Lund in 1970, the smokers’ clinic and
NRTs entered into the long-term service of each other; a new combination that in just over a decade
would succeed in propagating the reality of smoking as nicotine addiction on to a global stage.