The full Chicago City Council may take up an ordinance at Wednesday's meeting that would ban flavored tobacco products, including menthol, from being sold 500 feet from a school. The current radius banning such sales near schools is 100 feet. The City Council’s Finance and Health Committees signed off and advanced the measure Monday.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel has also been pushing to outlaw e-cigarettes in the same places where smoking is banned, as well as sales of the devices to minors, but the measure did not win approval in committee this week due to pushback from several aldermen. Critics say the mayor's proposed e-cigarette regulations may hinder people from using the product to stop smoking.

“We’re punishing a group of people for trying not to smoke. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t on one day say, ‘We’re going to tax the heck out of cigarettes,’ then the next day [say], ‘For those of you who can’t afford it and decide you want to smoke vapor, we’re going to decide you can’t do that, either,’” Ald. Leslie Hairston (5th) said Monday, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

Hairston also noted that, “There is no proof that water vapor in the air does anything. If that is the case, humidifiers are gone. And boiling water is gone in restaurants.”

Emanuel fired back at opponents of the e-cigarette ban at a news conference Tuesday after he was presented with a “Visionary Elected Leader Award” from the African-American Tobacco Leadership Council regarding the proposed restrictions on sales of flavored tobacco products near schools.

“This vote is about who's going to stand up for kids. Who's not going to be lured by the money? Who is not going to be lured by this research that is going to say oh, we don’t know. Well the FDA has been asking for information. Put it out,” Emanuel said at the press conference, adding, "If you think e-cigarettes are part of quitting as an adult, OK. But we’re talking about: Don’t let kids get started on e-cigarettes. . . .We’re talking about our children here. Keep your hands off of them.”

Meanwhile, the city will be imposing a 50 cent-per-pack cigarette tax increase next year as part of the 2014 budget.

UPDATE (2:55 p.m.): At Wednesday's meeting, the Chicago City Council voted 48-2 to approve the ordinance concerning the sale of flavored tobacco products near schools. The two "no" votes came from Alds. Roderick Sawyer (6th) and Willie Cochran (20th).

After the vote, Emanuel told council members that he "respects those that voted 'no,'" but explained that the measure is a "no-brainer."

Tobacco companies market flavored cigarettes to children in an "attempt to lure them, and I'm sorry, to become addicts," Emanuel stressed.

Emanuel went on to highlight the city's various efforts aimed at improving children's health in the city.

"Every child will be within a 10-minute walk from a new park," he noted. "We put recess back in the schools. We changed their meals to make them better quality, and we are going to allow these cigarette products, that we know from all the research target minority kids, to be within 500 feet of the schools?"

"Kids don't have sometimes the judgement, and we as adults have to show it," Emanuel continued. "Now, I'm sorry, I've had a career battling big tobacco. They have a bottom line, but we have a future, and that's the children of the city of Chicago, and our children are not for sale...What do you want? 200 feet? 300 feet? It's not a compromise" for Chicago's youth and their health.

Meanwhile, Emanuel warned council members that the issue of banning e-cigarettes will come up again early next year when aldermen come back from their break.

"The next month, you'll see some intensity around here, because tobacco companies are coming to Chicago, and they're hiring people to work you over just like they did in Congress," he told the council members. "So get ready. This is a time for moral courage to realize where you stand as it relates to the future of our children...and I look forward to that battle, because our children are not part of somebody else's bottom line."