UCL Lunch Hour Lecture: Beating Cigarette Addiction the latest evidence (19 Jan 2010)

Professor Robert West (UCL Epidemiology and Public Health)

One fifth of adults in Britain still smoke, and half of those who do not stop will be killed by their cigarettes a typical 20 years before their time. Cigarettes deliver nicotine to the brain faster than an intravenous injection, changing the brain so that it craves cigarettes, and of the four million British smokers who try to stop this year, fewer than 5 per cent of them will succeed. Fortunately research has found ways of boosting the chances of success by some 300 per cent. This lecture will present the latest evidence on the best ways of beating cigarette addiction.