A long, painful road.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Give the tobacco companies credit: They've been sued by everyone from the U.S. Department of Justice to the surviving spouses of people their deadly products prematurely killed, and they're still in business, still making millions.

Federal judges have ruled that for decades, tobacco companies have `lied, misrepresented and deceived the American public' and `manipulated the use of nicotine so as to increase and perpetuate addiction.' And they're still in business, still making millions.

Cigarette smoking kills an estimated 440,000 U.S. citizens each year, according to the National Institutes of Health - more than alcohol, cocaine, heroin, homicide, suicide, car accidents, fire and AIDS combined. Since 1964, more than 12 million Americans have died prematurely from smoking. And 25 million U.S. smokers alive today will most likely die of a smoking-related illness. And the tobacco companies are still in business, still making millions.

And still, astonishingly, unregulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

That's right. The only consumer product that kills people when used as directed is not only unregulated, but current law prohibits the government from taking action to reduce or eliminate the dangerous chemicals in cigarettes or to restrict their marketing and sale to children.

So don't hold your breath just because a new Harvard study - concluding that cigarette makers have for years deliberately increased nicotine levels in cigarettes to make them more addictive - has revived calls for FDA regulation of the industry. The tobacco industry hasn't exactly been taken by surprise by the Harvard revelations.

They're already mobilizing their congressional pawns to thwart Sen. Edward Kennedy's promise to reintroduce a bill that would allow the FDA to regulate cigarettes. Sen. Richard Burr, a Republican from the unmistakably branded heart of North Carolina's tobacco country - Winston-Salem - promises to "use every legislative tool at my disposal" to fight FDA regulation.

"I could make it a long and painful process," Burr said.

How appropriate, given that in addition to deep, rich flavor, tobacco is unrivaled at delivering long, painful dying. Cigarette smoking has been linked to about 90 percent of all lung cancer cases, the No. 1 cancer killer of both men and women. Smoking is also associated with cancers of the mouth, pharynx, larynx, esophagus, stomach, pancreas, cervix, kidney, ureter and bladder. Long and painful, every one.

With Democrats in control of Congress, Kennedy's bill, which passed the Senate in 2004 but failed in the House, stands a chance of becoming law. FDA regulation of tobacco products is long overdue, but a lot of people have died waiting for it to happen. Meanwhile, the tobacco companies are still in business, still making millions.