Okay, maybe smoking isn't a vice in the classic sense, although it used to be considered as such, but it is a real health risk. People are going to die earlier and uglier than they otherwise might have just because they smoked cigarettes. And yet the States are now getting themselves hooked on revenues from added taxes on tobacco products, taxes which hit poorer people much harder than wealthier people. The other big State-supported vice is gambling. State-run lotteries finance everything from new schools to new football stadiums.
Studies show that poor people do most of the gambling in lotteries.
For the high-rollers there is riverboat gambling, which is growing rapidly in the South. Or you can go to your friendly neighborhood Indian reservation. Watching State governments trying to muscle their way into getting a cut of the Indian's take is a very edifying process. Relying on vice to finance governmental activities is bad public policy. I don't like the regressive nature of most of these schemes, where the poor spend more of their money supporting their bad habits than do the rich.