Much of the addictiveness is from psychological conditioning from decades of public relations campaigns and marketing, the memes that go around these sayings people have.

The suppression of hypocapnia is a very relevant one though. This is something you don't get with vapes. Hypocapnia is something that often is associated with asthma and it causes you to need to breathe more even though you have enough oxygen - because you breathe too fast, you reduce the CO2 level and that reduces the capacity of haemoglobin to release oxygen into cells, CO2 unlocks the cage that the iron based protein holds oxygen with.

Also, nicotine is likely not too far distantly related to caffeine and theobromine and theobromine in particular increases breathing efficiency.