The article wasn’t talking about smoking, and nicotine is not addictive.
> Nicotine is highly addictive.
https://nida.nih.gov/publications/research-reports/tobacco-n...
> Is nicotine addictive? Yes.
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If nicotine wasn't addictive, why would people find that nicotine patches or nicotine gum helps with withdrawals from various tobacco products?
And nicotine is addictive.
Let's take it from the article instead:
> like all stimulants, nicotine may raise blood pressure somewhat, and is addictive to some degree, but the risks do not appear much more strikingly harmful than caffeine or modafinil
And:
> My take away is that there is addiction but it’s drastically overestimated by almost everyone and may been conflated with the habit-formation capability
I'm not criticizing the article, I'm disagreeing with the statement "nicotine is not addictive". I wouldn't have commented to disagree with a statement like "nicotine's addictiveness is exaggerated because it's conflated with tobacco's addictiveness", but that wasn't what goodluckchuck said
Is smoking addictive? Absolutely, but not because it contains nicotine.
“additional work since 2002 has clearly shown that nicotine alone does have some addictive properties”
And, frustratingly, they point out that addiction effects can’t be parsed out using smokers because of the confounding effects of other chemicals present in tobacco yet they quote a study using smokers to support the non-addiction claim.
but it's worth noting that caffeine dependence is pretty common.