July 27, 1998

Dear Colleague:

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is pleased to welcome you to this important and timely conference, Addicted to Nicotine: A National Research Forum. I would like to thank the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) for joining us in sponsoring the conference. I also extend my gratitude to our partners and cosponsors who helped make this conference possible, the National Cancer Institute, the National Institutes of Health and the Office of Smoking and Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

This promises to be an engaging and informative forum. We've come a long way in our understanding about nicotine addiction and effective treatments for it. The scientific advances and interdisciplinary learning that will be showcased over the next two days are helping to change the way our society views tobacco and nicotine addiction.

But we still have much to do to assure both that we learn more about the addiction and that the best practices and treatments for nicotine addiction are used routinely by health care providers. It is our Foundation's hope that the breakthroughs and state-of-the-art knowledge that emerge from this forum will set us on a new course for preventing and treating nicotine addiction. If this occurs, it would greatly improve the health and healthcare of all Americans.

Sincerely,

Steven A. Schroeder, MD