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I don't think that it's about taxing unhealthy habits or activities as it is about trying to help pay for the increased costs of health care from unhealthy activities that deteriorate one's health which at the same time could be avoided entirely is such activity was avoided. I don't think that I'm a hypocrite, I just don’t believe that I should pay for your hospital stay when you get lung cancer because I didn't put a gun to your head and make you smoke that cigarette.
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So you say that it is about taxing unhealthy activities that deteriorate ones health which at the same time can be completely avoided. Much like smoking, eating big Macs can be completely avoided (you can, for instance, eat a salad instead. Even at McDonalds). And eating big Macs has been fairly clearly shown to be an unhealthy activity. It is likely that eating big Macs will increase you risk of heart disease, and thus the chance that you will be sitting in a hospital bed at some time possibly at taxpayer expense. So if we tax cigarettes to pay for this, why should we not tax big Macs?
The second problem with this argument is the assumption that the money from the tax is the same amount as the money spent on caring for smokers. But the states already got that money back in the tobacco settlement several years ago. The billions of dollars that was paid by tobacco companies came straight out of smokers’ pockets, so really we've already paid for any money the state spends on our hospitalization.
Now if you can show me a study that says "we need to increase the cigarette tax to $1 a pack because that is the exact amount smokers cost us in increases health care costs," I'll concede the point, but you won't find it because that's not why states increase cigarette taxes. They do it because in the current political environment it’s impossible to raise taxes, except on "evil" smokers. So your schools, your roads, everything is being paid for on the backs of cigarette smokers.
Finally, smoking is admittedly a self-destructive and stupid behavior. But part of the price of living in a free society is allowing people to engage in self-destructive and admittedly stupid behaviors, even if these impose some burden on the rest of society. It’s called freedom, and it’s based on the presumption that the government does not know best. If we're going try to get rid of all stupid and self-destructive behaviors that impose a cost on society, why not put a huge prohibitively expensive tax on sex outside of marriage (all those STD clinics are expensive, not to mention children born out of wedlock), SUVs (air pollution and increased dependence on foreign oil), and of course the aforementioned big Macs. Where are all the libertarians on the board to defend our right to kill ourselves in the way we choose?