Benefits of Sinning.

Having read a bit of Personal Financial Planning in the recent past made it quite hard for me to not take note of the term Sin Tax in Investopedia the other day. The term is explained as the state sponsored tax added to products like liquor, tobacco, alcohol, gambling etc to discourage consumers and reduce their consumption. These taxes needless to say generate massive government revenue.
What caught my attention here was finding a connection between the principle of Game Theory popularised by Dr. John Nash, who inferred that performance of one player directly affects the performance of the other, and the given form of tax. In the case of the imposition of the Sin Tax, the government totally depends on the decision of the other player, the consumer, to reap the benefits of tax. This would also be indicative of the government making money out of the "not so good" consumer decisions but from the economic perspective it generates revenue in the form of tax. Now though this may seem like a one sided game benefiting only the government, it reminds me also of another theory by Adam Smith which states that the best results in a group come from everyone doing what's best for themselves and the group. Now what puzzles me here is the criteria for judging what's best for the two parties (the government and the consumer), obviously liquor and tobacco and alcohol can't do much justice being termed good but yes income for government does stand good. The tax thus can be viewed from two perspective: The Game Theory perspective allows the government to benefit only when the other player makes the expected move and Adam Smith's theory of doing what's best for all so that both the parties benefit, gives another dimension of viewing it, the definition of benefit though remains ambiguous.