Tiffany’s (1990, Psychol Rev 97:147-168) model of automatized schemata hypothesizes that addicts may encode drug-taking actions as automatized motor schemata, which can be activated by relevant sensory input. Interestingly, recent studies have shown that smokers exhibit an atypical activation of sensorimotor brain regions when exposed to smoking-related visual cues. We employed functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and the Fagerström-Test for Nicotine Dependence (FTND) to compare cue-related neural responses in smokers and non-smokers. Smoking-related images induced stronger activations in smokers than non-smokers in regions, which are components of a brain system related to visuomotor integration and tool-use: bilateral posterior middle temporal gyrus (pMTG) and premotor cortex (PMC), left intraparietal sulcus (IPS) and superior parietal lobule (SPL) and right cerebellum; the same pattern of activation was revealed in bilateral caudate nucleus. The smokers’ group also showed substantial correlations between FTND scores and cue-induced BOLD signals in left pMTG, IPS and bilateral PMC. As both attention effects and vascular differences between the two groups could be excluded, we conclude that conditioned visual stimuli automatically activate smoking-related motor knowledge and tool-use skills in smokers as predicted by Tiffany’s model. Most interestingly, the degree of neural activation in visuomotor regions reflected the individual’s “smoking expertise�.