There has been a flurry of outrage at the lax regulation that allowed contaminated peanuts to kill nine people and sicken close to 700.

Yet it almost goes unnoticed that cigarettes, the deadliest products sold legally in the United States, are free from oversight. That's right: The Food and Drug Administration regulates almost everything Americans ingest, including nicotine gum, but not the product that makes that gum necessary. That allows cigarette makers to peddle a noxious mix of chemicals with impunity. Long-stalled legislation that would give the FDA authority to regulate tobacco products would change that. The House shouldn't hesitate to pass the measure, which could come up for a vote as early as Monday.

Some 400,000 people die in this country each year from smoking-related causes. Yet cigarette makers don't even have to disclose what is in their products.

The legislation would make such disclosure mandatory by creating a new agency within the FDA tasked with regulating tobacco products. Full disclosure would help health officials more accurately assess the dangers of smoking.

The FDA would then be able to order tobacco companies to remove harmful additives and to make other changes that could make cigarettes less lethal.

Increased oversight of Big Tobacco would be reason enough to support the measure. But the bill also imposes restrictions on marketing that could help prevent young smokers from picking up the habit.

There would be a ban on cigarette billboards and other outdoor advertising of tobacco products near schools. Cigarette makers wouldn't be able to sponsor sports and entertainment events, and health warning labels would have to cover at least 30 percent of the front and back of a cigarette pack. In addition, tobacco companies would no longer be able to promote their products with misleading labels as "light" or "low tar."

These sensible restrictions are why more than 1,000 organizations -- even tobacco giant Altria, the parent company of Richmond-based Philip Morris -- support the legislation.

As the bill nears a vote, opponents, including some Philip Morris competitors and tobacco-state lawmakers, are ratcheting up the vitriol.

Lorillard, the company that manufactures the menthol cigarette Newport, ran an advertisement in the Wall Street Journal charging that "Congress is forcing this regulation on an agency that seems to be struggling to attend to its most fundamental responsibilities to keep our food and drug supply safe."

This missive ignores the bill's provision for a user fee to be imposed on cigarette makers to create a tobacco oversight agency; that would allow the FDA to shoulder a new responsibility without impairing its ability to carry out its other missions.

North Carolina Sens. Richard Burr, R, and Kay Hagan, D, are also scrambling to protect their state's tobacco growers.

They've proposed an alternative bill that would create an agency separate from the FDA to regulate tobacco. The separate agency would get only a fraction of the funding that its FDA counterpart would receive, and it would effectively shield Big Tobacco from meaningful oversight.

Lawmakers should not let these diversions distract them from the task at hand. The bill before them would save lives, and they should move with haste to approve it.

This editorial appeared in the Washington Post.

March 27, 2009