Our Experts

Jack E. Henningfield, Ph.D. is one of the world's leading experts on addiction, and the behavioral, cognitive, and central nervous system (CNS) effects of various drugs and drug formulations. He joined Pinney Associates in September 1996 after 16 years of public service at the Intramural Research Program of the National Institutes of Health's National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA).

Through his work at PinneyAssociates, Dr. Henningfield counsels clients on assessment of the abuse liability of new CNS-acting drugs and formulations, evaluation of potential application of the Controlled Substances Act to new products, assessment of the tamper resistance of novel formulations, and development of risk management approaches.

At NIDA, Dr. Henningfield studied the abuse liability and cognitive effects of a broad range of drugs and contributed to the development of improved methods for abuse liability assessment and guidance documents for abuse liability assessment.  He served as Chief of its Human Performance Laboratory from 1984-1985, Chief of the Biology of Dependence and Abuse Potential Assessment Section from 1985 - 1996, and Chief of the Clinical Pharmacology Research Branch from 1989-1996. Dr. Henningfield was a frequent liaison to the Food and Drug Administration on issues concerning drug scheduling and addiction.  He was a frequent contributor to NIDA’s reports to Congress, Reports of the Surgeon General, and contributed to numerous congressional testimonies on behalf of NIDA.  He has been a member of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine faculty since 1978 and is presently Adjunct Professor of Behavioral Biology, at the Medical School's Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, and an affiliated faculty with The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.  Dr. Henningfield is also a former faculty member with the Program of Toxicology at the University of Maryland at Baltimore.

Dr. Henningfield's research has resulted in the writing of numerous books and monographs; the design of educational videotapes; and an impressive body of over 400 published papers on myriad topics in public health, pharmacology, and addiction.  He has received numerous awards for his research and policy contributions to the understanding and control of tobacco addiction.

A summa cum laude graduate of the University of Minnesota in 1974 with a bachelor's in psychology, Dr. Henningfield received his doctorate in experimental psychology in 1977 from the University of Minnesota's Psychopharmacology Training Program, where his focus was addiction, CNS medications, preclinical abuse liability assessment, and drug addiction control.  Dr. Henningfield's post-doctoral training came as a National Council on Alcoholism postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Minnesota from 1977-1978, as a postdoctoral research associate at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Behavioral Pharmacology Research Unit. He was a staff fellow at the NIDA Addiction Research Center from 1980-1982.