Public health advocates hailed the vote on penalties as a victory and hoped it would help rescue the bill drafted by Arizona republican John McCain.

At the same time, public health groups want the bulk of the money that the bill would raise from higher cigarette prices to be spent on health and anti-smoking programmes, not on tax cuts.

The bill has been bogged down since mid-May by opponents who have dragged out debate, arguing about taxes and other issues only tangentially relate to cutting teenage smoking.

Democrats set in motion a process that will lead to a vote early next week on cutting off debate, which democrats consider an undeclared filibuster by republicans aimed at stalling the bill to death.In the sole vote of the week, the senate did overwhelminglyendorse a measure sponsored by Illinois democrat Dick Durbin and Ohio republican Mike DeWine requiring the tobacco industry to cut underage smoking by 67 per cent in 10 years or face "lookback" penalties of up to $5 billion a year.

Companies would face additional fines linked to how much appeal their specific brands have to teens and children.

The McCain bill aimed for a 60-per cent reduction in underage smoking and $4 billion in annual penalties.

"This is a significant win for the public health community and for children," former Food and Drug Administration chief David Kessler and former US Surgeon General Everett Koop said in a joint statement.

The Durbin-DeWine measure has to overcome more procedural hurdles before it is formally adopted in the McCain bill. Complicating the picture, some of the people who voted for the tougher penalties are the very same conservatives who have been assaulting the bill as a big government overspending debacle.Many of them also voted last month to cut out of thebill all the legal liability protections for the tobacco industry, in what some of McCain's allies feared was a ploy to make the bill so big and tough that it would just collapse.

McCain spent much of the week seeking a compromise between the most ardent tax-cutting conservatives in his own party and more moderate lawmakers who want more of the money to go to health. When the talks broke down on Thursday, each party was left with its own tax plan.

"What's happening now is what I feared would happen to this bill. It's getting very partisan... I hope we would end this dialogue or just move on to other things," said McCain.

Leading the republican drive for tax cuts, Texas senator PhilGramm proposed spending $16.3 billion over five years to giving tax cuts to married couples with incomes under $50,000. That would start phasing out the so-called "marriage penalty," a tax code quirk that forces some married couples to pay more than they would if they were single.

Gramm argued that the $1.10-per-packcigarette price increase in the McCain bill would fall disproportionately on lower-income people and that congress was obligated to return "the largest money grab I have seen" back to taxpayers.

Daschle and other democrats said the Gramm proposal would gut the tobacco bill by eventually taking up to three-fourths of the money away from states, public health, medical research, anti-smoking programmes and aid to farmers."

It's death by amputation," Daschle said, adding that republicans have proposals for additional tax cuts and spending programmes that have nothing to do with teen smoking.

Daschle acknowledged that Gramm's proposal may win, though he predicted no democrats would support it.

He proposed instead a $12-billion tax cut package, combining some "marriage penalty" relief for couples with income under $60,000 with a proposal to expand tax deductions for people who buy their own health insurance.

White House spokesman Mike McCurry did not rule out accepting some form of tax relief on thetobacco bill, but said the final product must "have the kind of money that will make this programme work, that will protect kids from tobacco use, and accomplish the public health objectives that are identified in the bill."