Nicotine can have some benefits; see for instance https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6457772
> are physically addictive on the level of heroin
False. They're a bit above alcohol; heroin is much higher. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rational_scale_to_as...
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> and are one of the leading causes of human death.
Correct.
I realize this is anecdotal, but I feel the need to point out that my father, a veteran ER doctor of over thirty years, has said more than once that based on his experience of patients, he thinks it is easier to quit heroin than nicotine.
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/f961/639e2a998d275f3e8f8f4c...
Nicotine is quite often used as a form of self-medication - it's helpful for people with all kinds of issues, from depression to adhd, to weight control.
Even among doctors, there is very little knowledge on the subject of why people take up smoking, and usually it's assumed it's just a matter of bad habits.
So, if someone uses nicotine as an unwitting way of self-medication, it will indeed be extremely difficult to quit without fixing the core problem.
To some extent it's like calling SSRIs "hard to quit", because people who begin taking them often never quit, even when side affects are worse than those of nicotine.
Kind of like how in WWII the British improved the survivability of their bombers by increasing the armor in the places returning aircraft weren't damaged, theorizing correctly that those were the places the planes that didn't return were hit.
If a person with an addictive personality gets on heroin, they're probably visiting the ER very few if any times before they hit the morgue.
Edit: By the way, for an appreciation of "A bit above alcohol", check out an inpatient alcohol detox clinic sometime... it is no joke at all.
I don't see a correlation with cigarettes, which offer you nothing beneficial, are physically addictive on the level of heroin, and are one of the leading causes of human death.