Kansas Statehouse in Topeka, February 2014.

Topeka ? The 2017 legislative session in Kansas was marked by high-profile debates over school finance, Obamacare and reversing course on Gov. Sam Brownback’s income tax policies. But roiling beneath those issues were intense debates over a number of other issues.

Among those were debates over so-called “sin taxes” on things such as alcohol and tobacco, as well the decades-old debate over the state’s total ban on any form of marijuana, including medicinal and industrial hemp.

It may have been because those other, more high-profile debates consumed so much of the Legislature’s time and energy that the lower-profile issues did not advance this year. But advocates of those issues say they hope the topics will remain alive in 2018.

“The Legislature missed an opportunity to improve health and save lives through a cigarette and tobacco tax, and we are disappointed that didn’t happen,” said Hilary Gee, a lobbyist for the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network.

When the session started in January, the Cancer Action Network was one of the few organizations that supported Brownback’s call for raising cigarette taxes by $1 per pack and raising taxes on other tobacco products by similar rates.

In fact, the only criticism the network members had of Brownback’s plan was that they didn’t think it went far enough. Gee said her group was pushing for a $1.50 per-pack increase in cigarette taxes.

“That would have generated upwards of $90 million a year, and that’s money that could go to efforts in health and prevention, but also other state priorities like education,” she said.

Brownback also had proposed doubling the state’s liquor enforcement tax, raising it to 16 percent. That’s a tax the state levies on liquor and cereal malt beverages sold in retail stores, as well as liquor sold by distributors to restaurants and bars.

Those proposals by the administration, however, were generally viewed as efforts to save the sweeping income tax cuts that he had championed in 2012, tax cuts that many lawmakers had promised to repeal when they ran for office in the 2016 elections.

The liquor industry fought back hard against the proposed alcohol taxes, as it does every year when such taxes are proposed. In the end, though, there was simply no appetite to raise sin taxes after an election in which voters sent such a loud message that they wanted to change course on income taxes.

“We will continue to work with lawmakers to save lives by reducing the burden of tobacco in Kansas,” Gee said.

Meanwhile, on a completely separate track, other groups were pushing for legislation to relax the state’s laws regarding various forms of marijuana.

Those bills took several forms and had different purposes. The one thing they had in common, however, was that none of them made their way to the governor’s desk.

Sen. David Haley, D-Kansas City, sponsored a bill, as he has almost every year for the last five years, to authorize the use of marijuana to treat certain medical conditions. A version of that bill advanced out of committee but it was never debated on the Senate floor.

On the House side, there were several bills dealing with the legalization of hemp, a lower-grade variety of the cannabis plant that contains significantly smaller amounts of the intoxicating substance THC.

Agricultural groups supported a bill that would have authorized pilot projects for research, production and use of “industrial hemp,” which can be used to make products such as rope, fabric, paper and synthetic plastics.

That bill passed the House, 103-18, but never came out of a Senate committee.

And Rep. John Wilson, D-Lawrence, pushed again for a bill to legalize the medicinal use of hemp oil to treat certain kinds of seizure disorders.

That bill was the subject of emotional testimony in the House Health and Human Services Committee, where Wilson served as ranking minority member. But when it came up for a vote in that committee, Wilson himself asked to table it when it became clear it did not have enough votes to pass.

“I didn’t want it to die,” Wilson said about his decision.

Wilson has since announced that he plans to step down from the Legislature later this year, and he said he regrets that he wasn’t able to get that bill passed during his tenure in the House.

“It’s unfinished business, and yet I think we were able to move forward getting people comfortable talking about marijuana in a serious way,” he said.

The Kansas Legislature operates on two-year cycles that start in odd-numbered years following legislative elections. That means any bill that was introduced in 2017 and wasn’t killed in a committee or on the floor of either chamber will remain alive for possible consideration in 2018.