LITTLE ROCK— Lawmakers next year will likely consider raising Arkansas’ cigarette tax by around 50 cents a pack to fund a proposed statewide trauma system, a state lawmaker said Monday.

State Rep. Gene Shelby, D-Hot Springs, who proposed a cigarette tax increase that failed during the 2007 legislative session, said he has spoken with the governor’s office and other lawmakers about bringing up the issue next year. Paul Halverson, director of the Arkansas Department of Health, also said he has proposed to Gov. Mike Beebe that the tax be raised as a way to cut the state’s smoking rate.

However, that could be a difficult task as Beebe and lawmakers face pressure to further cut the state’s grocery tax in a legislative session before an election year. State budget officials say raising the cigarette tax would take a three-fourths vote of both the 100-member House and 35-member Senate. In 2007, Shelby’s proposal never made it out of a skeptical House committee, which said the tax would hurt the poor.

“That’s what we’re kind of looking at it because there’s no need of doing this if it doesn’t have a chance of passing,” Shelby said.

Matt DeCample, a spokesman for Beebe, said the governor’s office has had meetings discussing the possibility of raising the per-pack tax on cigarettes. However, the governor, himself an occasional smoker, has yet to endorse the idea, DeCample said.

“The governor has left the possibility open,” DeCample said. “We don’t have our own proposal or are supporting any other specific proposal. It’s early.”

Still, lawmakers and other state government officials have asked for new estimates on how much money would be raised by boosting the current 59-cent-per-pack tax. A 50-cent increase would raise about $71.1 million, said George Foy of the state Department of Finance and Administration. A 75-cent raise would bring in $96.3 million, while adding a dollar would bring in $114.7 million, Foy said.

Lawmakers were unable to agree on a funding source for a trauma system during the 2007 session. Arkansas remains one of only a handful of states without a trauma system — a unified network of hospitals that can route victims of car crashes, electrocutions and other serious injuries quickly to specialists. Earlier estimates put the annual cost of fully funding a trauma system at $25 million.

Beebe recently offered $200,000 from the governor’s emergency fund to pay for a database on specialist staffing at hospitals and to bring in consultants to suggest how to build a trauma system.