Dropdownlist: handling very wide listitems

[HoustonFreeways]

I am populating a dropdownlist via a databind to a database. However, the
text to be displayed can be very long, making the dropdownlist very wide. I
need some way to reduce the width of the dropdownlist but still show the
entire text of the listitem option.

Observations:
1. Setting the dropdownlist to a fixed width chops off the option text to
the width of the control (making long text invisible).
2. Listitem elements are plain text only and do not render any HTML tags.
3. The listitem class is sealed/notInheritable, so making a special listitem
class appears not to be an option.

Ideally, the dropdownlist listitem would be able to wrap the text within a
fixed width field, while still acting as a single unit for selection
purposes.

Another possibility which appears to be impossible is to manually truncate
the long option to a fixed number of characters and then use a tooltip to
show the full text. Listitems don't support tooltips, however.

Does anyone have any ideas on how to deal with this?

[HoustonFreeways]

It appears I could use a specialty control, such as EasyListBox

http://easylistbox.com/demoCustomized.aspx

Still, it would be preferred to do this without a special control.