I think he meant in regards to the health effects of it, not specifically the brutality of the addition. I finally got off cigarettes with vapes and Juul was the only one that worked for me. I smoked since I was around 13.

I personally would consider the addiction part of the health effects. Particularly in the lower income population who can struggle with keeping their addiction fed. For us tech professionals, keeping an addiction fed is not an issue.

The Gwern article posted earlier is more about the benefits of nicotine, but does note that nicotine is potentially more disruptive than caffeine: "we will want to be more careful with the nicotine than with modafinil or caffeine, where the main consequence of carelessness is tolerance rendering the stimulant useless or messing up our sleep for a few days."

Also note that the article specifically calls out that vaping is an issue, and the author is only comfortable with the use of nicotine gum.

It mainly points out that if you are extremely careful with the addictive properties, it's a decent drug. But no, I don't think we're throwing the baby out with the bathwater because the lack of studies on the topic of vaping, and the potential of saddling you with a difficult to shake addiction.

If you read OPs article, they imply that a lot of cigarettes addictive quality is due to the MAO inhibitors, not the nicotine