The Senate has two tobacco-related health bills on track for passage, but they may be working at cross-purposes.

To pay for an expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), a Finance Committee draft bill would increase cigarette taxes to $1 per pack, raising an estimated $35.7 billion in new revenue.

Another bill, sponsored by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., would have the Food and Drug Administration regulate tobacco with the help of advertising controls, new warnings and nicotine reductions, all designed to help people quit smoking or stop them from starting. Kennedy’s bill (S 625) is due to be marked up Wednesday by the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

In scoring the Finance tax proposal, the Congressional Budget Office factored in that a few million smokers might quit puffing because of the increased cost. But CBO analysts didn’t take into account the effect that new FDA regulations might have on the tax package.

So supporters of the SCHIP program may be put in the uncomfortable position of having to depend on committed smokers not heeding new FDA warnings.

That’s a strange position for lawmakers to be in, says John Singleton, a spokesman for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. “It really takes a point of view that the government’s trying to have it both ways. We need a lot more money from people who are smoking and, by the way, we need to place more restrictions on tobacco.”