Maybe it goes beyond mental and is almost pavlovian.
Oh, it is Pavlovian without a doubt.
If I'm on a particularly long bender and I'm smoking more than I usually do, sometimes just the thought of going and pulling one out of the pack will cause me to cough. Literally. I will cough or gag just thinking about picking up the pack of smokes. Totally Pavlovian.
Also, on the issue of smoking in bars...
On my campus they used to allow smoking in ALL bars up until January of last year. It was just commonplace for people to be smoking inside the bar. When they passed the law banning that, I was PISSED. Very angry.
Now I don't mind the change at all. The people who legitimately don't want to be bothered by the smoke and who want the "clean air" are fine and all the smokers just head outside. And, actually, it's kinda nice because there's usually a big gathering of smokers outside the bar and we can chat and have a good time amongst our little gang of "outcasts"
I usually meet a new, interesting person every night at the bar just because we are outside sharing the experience of being banned from smoking indoors. And the people hanging out smoking outside are always a lot of fun because everyone known that smokers are cooler than everyone else.