Topeka ? Health advocates touted an increase in the state cigarette tax as a way to generate needed revenue to help solve the budget crisis, and price some people, especially youngsters, out of smoking.

And they said the tax increase would be popular, citing polls showing overwhelming support from Kansans.

But proposals to increase the tax, offered by Gov. Mark Parkinson and others, appear to have gone up in smoke.

The reason? Legislators trying to round up votes for a tax increase package have received stiff opposition to proposed cigarette tax increases from legislators representing districts along the Kansas-Missouri border.

“All the people on the eastern side of the state were saying our folks will leave Kansas, they’ll go over to Missouri to buy cigarettes, and I think that’s what has really hurt that proposal,” Parkinson said in an interview with KTKA in Topeka. He said he thought it was a “false argument,” but added, “I understand their concern.”

Missouri has the second lowest state cigarette tax in the nation at 17 cents per pack. Kansas’ rate is 79 cents per pack.

At the start of the 2010 legislative session in January, Parkinson had proposed an increase of 55 cents per pack, which he said would have brought the rate up to the national average of $1.34 per pack. Prior to making his proposal, he called Missouri’s low state tax on cigarettes “archaic,” adding, “We should not allow Missouri’s very poor public policy to impact the decisions that we make.”

Last month, a poll commissioned by the Tobacco Free Kansas Coalition, showed that 69 percent of Kansans supported a $1 per pack increase in the cigarette tax. That would raise $75 million.