The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is proud, along with the other organizations represented here today, to endorse the updated guidelines, and we are committed to making it easier for the 70 percent of the nation's 45 million smokers who want to quit—succeed.

The Foundation's goal is to improve the health and healthcare of all Americans. And there is no better way to achieve our goal than helping the nation's 45 million smokers get the care they need to quit smoking and stay quit.

We are committed to making cessation counseling and assistance a routine part of the care that health care providers, health plans, and public health programs offer to smokers and other tobacco users—the vast majority of whom want to quit.

These new guidelines offer smokers and their health care providers the opportunity to make use of treatments that work. These recommended treatments can double—even triple—the success rates smokers typically achieve when they try to quit on their own.

Overcoming tobacco use and addiction is much harder when you battle it alone. I know because this is the way I quit—30 years ago—before there were effective treatments to turn to.

Thankfully, today's quitters, like Shirley Reimer and Lois Smith, two Wisconsin women who realized they did not have to go it alone, now have a wide range of options.

Both women, who will share their quitting journeys with us, found the support and help they needed through the Wisconsin Tobacco Quit Line. Shirley has been smoke-free for three years and four months and Lois for eight years.

Today there is effective and barrier-free help for smokers of all ages and it's just a phone call away—through the nation's network of state quitlines many of which also provide free medications for eligible adult smokers.

People like Shirley and Lois are the most important beneficiaries of these guidelines—getting help that works can make all the difference.

They, and all of us who are celebrating the release of the new guidelines today, want to help many more smokers join the ranks of those celebrating the health and freedom that comes with quitting success!