As part of comprehensive anti-tobacco legislation that would raise the smoking age, Chicago may soon levy potentially ruinous penalties on street entrepreneurs who undercut businesses and eat into tax revenues by illegally selling individual cigarettes.

The Chicago City Council appears poised to approve doubling fines to $5,000 for a first offense and to $10,000 for repeat offenders. If passed, the pending legislation also would introduce the possibility of six months in jail for unlucky salesmen.

Hard-handed enforcement of loose cigarette bans became nationally controversial after the 2014 death of Eric Garner, which followed a filmed encounter with New York police. But in Chicago, fear that the sales breed crime appears to make tough penalties and stronger enforcement appetizing.

The penalties, in fact, are a selling point for some members of the Chicago City Council, whose finance committee on Wednesday passed them as part of a larger package that also would ban adults 18 to 21 years old from buying tobacco, ban cigarette coupons and increase taxes on tobacco products.

The bigger-ticket items are likely to increase demand for individual cigarettes, and Mayor Rahm Emanuel agreed to the tougher penalties – along with promising stricter enforcement – to help the bill pass the committee in a 22-9 vote, the Chicago Sun-Times reports.

“A lot of the members at the first committee meeting were very much disturbed about the spread of people who are selling ‘loosies’ on the street,” says longtime Alderman Edward Burke, the committee chairman. “One of them cited a woman that makes about $800 a day selling loosies.”

Burke tells U.S. News the Garner case didn’t come up, and that adding the penalties attracted enough votes to gain passage.

Alderman Roderick Sawyer says he voted for the bill in committee because of the added penalties, but remains undecided on the package. Sawyer says reducing taxes would prove more effective at killing the black market, but he doesn't see that as politically possible given the influence of advocacy groups.

Sawyer says he represents an economically mixed district and sees people brazenly selling loose cigarettes outside legitimate businesses multiple times a day. Increased penalties and enforcement, he says, hopefully will do something to mitigate the situation.

"Gangs have now taken over the sale of cigarettes in a lot of our communities – guys I've talked to make several hundred dollars a day selling loose cigarettes. It's taking over the drug market," he says. "A young lady got killed this summer over territory for selling loose cigarettes."

Sawyer says he and his colleagues haven't talked much about the Garner case. "I don't want people choked to death, obviously," he says. "What I do want them to do is discourage them from selling illegal cigarettes on the streets."

The legislation was temporarily stalled from a full council vote by members who invoked a parliamentary procedure that can force a bill's consideration to be postponed for one meeting.

The next full council meeting is March 16. Supporters may push for a meeting before then if they're confident they have 26 votes, but Alderman Anthony Napolitano, the 50-member chamber’s only Republican, says it’s never certain that a bill will pass.

Napolitano, who sees himself as a political independent, hasn’t been involved in the sausage-making that yielded higher penalties, but says he’s opposed to them and the bill as a whole.

“We’re surrounded by the suburbs, so all it’s going to do is take business away from our ward and they’re going to walk across the street,” he says of the package's taxes on cigars and loose tobacco, and its ban on discounts that alleviate the punch of already-high cigarette prices.

Napolitano says the resulting price bump will only increase illegal sales of loose cigarettes, and increased enforcement against them simply doesn’t make sense with rising homicide rates.

“We don’t even have enough police officers to keep 356 people from being shot [this year to date]. How are we going to worry about the loose cigarette trade?” he says, adding the bill’s other provisions would be “creating a better trade outside the door” of stores.

“It’s ludicrous to me,” he says.

But Alderman Proco Joe Moreno, one of the bill’s sponsors, says “the excuses given to try to derail this are absolutely ridiculous.”

Moreno says “it’s going to pass and shame on us if it doesn’t,” accusing critics of secretly being in the pocket of tobacco companies and retailers.

“It doesn’t make any sense, that we’re not going to look at taxing a dangerous product because there’s a black market that exists or that may grow – give me a break,” he says. “We don’t say, 'Well, we’re not going to regulate guns at all.'”

Still, Moreno says “obviously we don’t want an Eric Garner case” and that colleagues who insist on stricter enforcement should “be careful what you wish for.”

People who buy cigarettes in Chicago pay even more than New Yorkers in combined federal, state and local taxes, at $7.17 for every pack of 20. New York, more famous for its so-called “buttleggers,” places second at $6.86 in taxes per pack.

“The states around us – Indiana, Wisconsin – have much, much lower taxes on cigarettes, so it’s not unusual for someone to drive to Indiana and drive back and buy cartons of cigarettes and break them up as loosies, which is a significant profit incentive,” Burke says.

"Anecdotally what we’re hearing is even if the citations are issued or arrests made, when they get to court, they’re dismissed and nobody gets fined," he adds. “Probably ... [because] there are more important issues facing the city, mainly in violent crime, narcotics and a disturbing murder rate."

Though Burke supports the legislation and anticipates victory, he says government mandates alone can’t eliminate smoking or smuggling. “Education of youngsters is as important as ordinances,” he says.

On-the-fence Sawyer says he's leaning toward again supporting the bill, but hopes for better solutions in the long run to permanently end the black market, perhaps by changing federal law to allow the sale of fewer than 20 cigarettes at a time.