It happens way too often, and I'm not convinced the car companies *ever* go after the people responsible for it. I wish they'd enforce their restrictions and hit them with the fines, and ultimately ban repeat offenders.
There is a spray you can get (i honestly don't remember the name of it unfortunately) that's supposed to be pretty good at getting rid of the smoke smell. I know someone that bought a car that had a pretty smokey smell to it and she found that it did a pretty decent job, especially after really getting it into the air vents. (Not febreeze, it's something else.)