Sure the tobacco companies are making money off of selling addictive chemicals to people, which is not a particularly ethical business practice. But "selling addictive chemicals with adverse effects roughly in line with caffeine" is still a big improvement over "selling addictive chemicals that kill people".
The nicotine is not the harmful thing in cigarettes[1][2] - the "without the smoke" bit is pretty important.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotine#Adverse_effects [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cigarette#Health_effects
Sure the tobacco companies are making money off of selling addictive chemicals to people, which is not a particularly ethical business practice. But "selling addictive chemicals with adverse effects roughly in line with caffeine" is still a big improvement over "selling addictive chemicals that kill people".