The subject was tobacco, and in a letter to an anti-smoking activist Dr. Kessler raised the possibility that cigarettes may be considered drug-delivery devices, subject to F.D.A. regulation.

He ginned up a way to more easily shuttle around the dozen or more monitors and drug-delivery devices attached to any cardiac patient after surgery, with a device known around the hospital as the "Nat Rack."

It is not uncommon for applications for approval of drug-delivery devices to be tied up for years.

In April, however, a Federal judge in North Carolina ruled that it had the right to classify nicotine as a drug and cigarettes as drug-delivery devices.

Common sense would suggest that the F.D.A. should have the authority to regulate cigarettes as drug-delivery devices under the Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act.

At yesterday's meeting, Mr. Parrish restated that Philip Morris opposed having the F.D.A. regulate nicotine as a drug or a cigarette as a drug-delivery device.

In 1996 the Food and Drug Administration declared that it had the authority to regulate nicotine as a drug and to regulate cigarettes as drug-delivery devices.

Senator Jeffords's draft was challenged by some Democrats and public health advocates because it would not classify nicotine as a drug and cigarettes as drug-delivery devices.

In 1996, after the agency ended its investigation of the tobacco industry, it issued a rule proposing to regulate nicotine as a drug and a cigarette as a drug-delivery device.

The company's senior vice president, Steven Parrish, said the company still opposed efforts by the Food and Drug Administration to classify nicotine as a drug and cigarettes as drug-delivery devices.