The time has clearly come to do what the U.S. tobacco companies have always feared: classify nicotine as a drug, label cigarettes as drug-delivery devices and place them under the regulatory authority of the federal Food and Drug Administration.

A plain-spoken Republican surgeon general, Dr. C. Everett Koop, suggested this nearly 20 years ago and tobacco companies have successfully fought the move ever since, mainly by dumping tons of money into the election coffers of the U.S. Congress.

Two recent revelations may finally bring enough pressure to bear to make a difference. We hope, for the sake of all Mainers, but particularly the young, that our congressional delegation will lend support and energy to this effort.

The Massachusetts Department of Public Health revealed Tuesday that between 1998 and 2004 tobacco companies were secretly and gradually increasing the amount of nicotine delivered to the average smoker by 10 percent.

Tobacco companies still do an immense amount of advertising and marketing, yet they made this product “improvement” in complete secrecy. Some tobacco companies even maintain Web sites and distribute literature they say is intended to help parents keep their kids from smoking. But, not surprisingly, they don’t mention the rising rate of nicotine delivery.

The increase in nicotine was finally revealed by the state of Massachusetts, which requires tobacco companies to submit to a more realistic and accurate test than that required by the federal government.

The Massachusetts report dovetails with a recent federal court decision. In a case brought by states and anti-smoking groups, a federal judge found that tobacco companies had made changes in cigarette design to produce lower federal test results, even as they were increasing their nicotine-delivery capacity.

In her 1,653-page opinion, Judge Gladys Kessler wrote, “Using the knowledge produced by that research, defendants have designed their cigarettes to precisely control nicotine-delivery levels and provide doses of nicotine sufficient to create and sustain addiction.”

That begins to sound suspiciously like the tactics of a street-corner drug dealer.

While we spend billions of federal dollars protecting ourselves from terrorists, we make little federal effort to control a product that results in an estimated 400,000 early deaths and adds $150 billion a year to our medical expenses.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2000 that the FDA had no authority to regulate tobacco, without specific authorization from Congress. That’s why we’re calling upon our congressional delegation to do everything in its power to provide that authority.

Consumers should know exactly what they are smoking. If we think it’s important to tell people what’s in a can of beans, they certainly deserve to know what tobacco companies are putting in their lungs.