SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — Before adjourning last Tuesday, the Illinois Senate did not vote on a bill that would have let counties impose a $2 per pack tax on cigarettes, but health advocates and county officials could revisit the issue during the new legislative session that began on Thursday, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports.

A group of county officials had pushed the measure, which would give counties the authority to increase taxes of up to $2 per pack on cigarettes purchased within their boundaries.

"It's been shown time and time again that if you increase the cost of cigarettes, young people will not begin to smoke," DuPage County Board Chairman Robert Schillerstrom, a leading backer of the bill, said in a statehouse press conference Tuesday. "It has a variety of win-wins in it. It allows us to meet our budgetary needs … and it also has a very strong public health component."

Last year, the Illinois House passed the bill last year, but many in the Senate and business community opposed the measure. "It would kill the business," Brian Patel, who owns four Han-Dee Mart convenience stores in Illinois, told the newspaper. "The (customers) are going to go to Missouri to buy their cigarettes. Cigarettes are 40 percent (of our sales). Without cigarettes, we wouldn't be in business."

Those in favor of the measure said they hadn't decided whether to pursue the issue in the new session. "It puts us at a terrible competitive disadvantage with neighboring states," Rob Karr, vice president of the Illinois Retail Merchants' Association, told the newspaper. Karr points out that 62 percent of Illinois residents live in a county bordering another state.