``The final details have not been worked out,'' said Thomas Pursell, lead counsel on tobacco litigation in the attorney general's office. ``We don't know when we'll get them, how they will be going out or what the criteria will be'' for receiving them.

McNeil, a division of the Johnson & Johnson Co., has a surplus of Nicotrol patches in its inventory and wants to have them used by consumers before they expire at the end of 1999, Pursell said. The 1.4 million patches represent more than 180,000 smoking cessation kits and have a retail value of about $5 million, he said.

``They told the board (of the nonprofit agency) they just happened to have a surplus of patches because sales have been slower than anticipated,'' Pursell said. Rather than eventually throw them out, company officials decided to donate them to Minnesota.

In turn, the attorney general's office gave the company a letter stating that the agency overseeing the $202 million fund was applying for status as a nonprofit, charitable group, which means McNeil will be able to use the donation as a tax deduction, Pursell said.

A representative from McNeil, based in Fort Washington, Pa., outlined the donation offer at an October meeting of the Minnesota Partnership for Action Against Tobacco. The board of the nonprofit, quasi-public organization decided to accept the donation, provided ``the `i's' are dotted and the `t's' are crossed,'' Pursell said.

Under the historic $6.6 billion settlement agreement with the tobacco industry, the court set aside $202 million for smoking cessation and research programs and then required Attorney General Hubert ``Skip'' Humphrey to submit a plan on how the money was to be spent.

Humphrey, in turn, proposed creating a nonprofit agency governed by a panel of blue-ribbon experts to develop plans for spending the money during the next 25 years. Ramsey County District Judge Lawrence Cohen approved Humphrey's plan in August.

Despite the welcome donation, the agency recognizes that convincing smokers to quit remains a monumental task, Pursell said.

Citing statistics contained in a study released last week by the Hazelden Foundation, Pursell said Minnesota smokers on average attempt to quit nearly 11 times before they finally succeed.

``We don't have any illusions that (the donation of the patches) is going to solve the problem, or that the $202 million will wipe out the problem,'' he said.

Nevertheless, the patches represent a substantial step toward meeting the agency's goal of providing help to every Minnesotan who wants to quit smoking, Pursell said.