Karl Fagerström

president of Fagerstrom Consulting

Karl Fagerström was born in Sweden in 1946. He studied at the University of Uppsala and graduated as a licensed clini- cal psychologist in 1975. At that time, he started a smoking cessation clinic and invented the Fagerström Test for Cigarette Dependence. In 1981, he got his doctorate with a dissertation about nicotine dependence and smoking cessation. At the end of the ’70s and early ’80s, he served as the editor-in-chief for the Scandinavian Journal for Behaviour Therapy.

From 1983 through 1997, he worked for Pharmacia & Upjohn as director of scientific information for nicotine-replacement products. He has worked with the nicotine gum Nicorette since 1975 and has been contributing to nicotine-replacement therapy developments such as patches, sprays, pouches and inhalers. Ever since 1975 to 2010, he has been working clinically part time. From 1997 to 2008, he worked with his private research clinic where he studied various drugs intended for treating nicotine dependence. He started a company, NicoNovum, that developed oral nicotine products under the brand name Zonnic.

Currently, he works with his own private consultancy (Fagerström Consulting). He is a founding member of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco (SRNT) and currently a deputy editor of Nicotine & Tobacco Research. He started the European SRNT affiliate in 1999 of which he was the president until 2003.

His main research contributions have been in the fields of behavior medicine, tobacco and nicotine with 180 peer- reviewed publications of which he is the first author of about 110. His current main interests are on understanding the positive effects of nicotine and reducing harm and exposure to tobacco toxins among all those who cannot give up smoking. He was awarded the World Health Organization medal in 1999 for outstanding work in tobacco control, and in 2013, he was the recipient of the Award on Clinical Science from the Society for Research on Tobacco and Nicotine.