I don't think 'plugging' budget holes with new taxes is a very smart decision; better to sew that hole together. I think the US has seen 60 years of plugging budget holes with new taxes and printing, yet our debt increases inexorably. States don't get it quite so easy, but the pattern is the same. Organizations nearly always expand if they can. I don't see government expansion as a certain good and taxes generally are a bad thing.
Sin taxes are paternalism. I'm generally opposed to government intervention in matters of individual agency. I'm not an ancap, so I determine this based on my importance and effectiveness vs gut liberty test. Vaccines pass this test fairly easily. Sumptuary taxes don't. *shrug*
The main issue is that politicians understand who these taxes affect and know that a sales tax doesn't get nearly as much attention as withholding. That's the whole reason I brought up lotteries, which was a bit of a red herring. They're a good way to tax people who won't pay much income tax (or any) or might be involved in grey/black markets and are generally addicted to taxed thing. It's an example of a tax/law that disproportionately affects the poor, both in terms of affected population and % of income.
If they were spending the money on educating people about the dangers of chronic smoking, alternatives, and ways of stopping, I think that changes the effectiveness vs gut liberty test and also allays some of my suspicions that the politicians making the taxes are profiteering off addiction. Is it evil for cigarette companies to make money from tobacco, but good for government's to do so?