Not addiction as such but what they do rely on is exploiting to your suggestibility. They attempt to subliminally persuade you to buy their products by wrapping them up to look nice, placing jingles in adverts so every time you hear the jingle you think of the product, post adverts in front of you repeatedly so they become embedded in your subconscious and word things very cleverly. It's all suggestion and the power of suggestion should never be underestimated. It is a way of speaking directly to the subconscious and the subconscious is the most powerful thing we know of.
The alcohol and tobacco industry do make plenty of money out of those poor souls, but everyone has a choice. Some people have zero will power, like for example my fiance. He knows how bad tobacco is for him, but he doesn't seem to be capable to stop. Sadly sometimes we do become real slaves to our addictions
Yes ofc. Most of them are. Actually very few addictions are not profitable. If you're addicted to a substance youll spend tons of money buying it, if addicted to gambling... etc. I think that only a few and rare addictions are not profitable like those limited cases of people that are addicted to eating toilet paper and stuff like that.