As I mentioned earlier, nicotine weight for weight is extremely addictive(more so than just about any other substance), and very toxic too, but smokers do not take as much of it as a heroin user does of their drug of chioice.
There are forms of synthetic opiates that are far more powerful than heroin, but there is not much use for them but they could also lay claim to being more addictive, if you define the strength of addiction as being related to the dosage taken.
Here’s a site that asks that very question, is nicotine as addictive as heroin, click on the link highlighted.
http://whyfiles.org/024nicotine/addiction.html
I see way too many smokers use this as a justification for continuation of their habit, its as if they are trying to be martyrs, the sheer pain from heroin withdrawal is of orders of magnitude greater than that of nicotine addiction, and yet, despite going through this withdrawal hell, the heroin user will go back time and again.
Yes the smoker will go back time and again, but the personal investment in trying to kick it is nothing like the commitment that heroin requires.
Withdrawal from heroin is way more severe than tobacco, I have come across people who have given up smoking with virtually no noticeable effects desoite smoking for many years, try that with a heroin user.
The compulsion to use heroin is so great that users will lose absolutely everything for a fix, they will murder, they will sell their bodies, they will starve if it means they can still spend their money on heroin, they will do anything, sell their children - literally to satisfy their craving.
Now compare that to the smoker, apart from the distant threat of ill health, the smoker is hardly likely to put themselve sin anything like the same dire circumstances, if a smoker doesn’t have their fix, they are not very likely to kill, or rob banks, the compulsion of heroin addiction is just so much worse.
Tobacco is insidious in its addictive nature, the risks to users are downgraded by the user, those risks are not as immediate, it seems on the face of it safer.
We all tend to rationalise risk, smokers do this and its much easier to do when the risk seems distant, but heroin users will often have several acquaintances who have died, the risk is much more immediate and apparent and yet they still keep up the habit.
I’d put it to anyone that if they smoked, and it was a regular occurance to watch a fellow user die in front of your eyes, someone in your peer group - not just an elderly aunt, they would soon quit because smoking would not have that strength of hold over them.
One cigarette will not kill you, but next fix can, its something that every heroin addict knows and yet they are still compelled to continue.
(besides teenagers are programmed to ignore that kind of shit)