The technical and engineering answer to your question is there is no reason. We can extract all kinds of things and re-add anything we please from a chemistry perspective. The process would have to be invented and refined, since the process of extracting nicotine for pharmaceuticals and e-cigarettes is likely to be unsuited to the kinds of characteristics you would be seeking, so it would have to be adapted.
But cigarette tobacco is already of exceedingly low quality, with many popular brands containing up to 70% reconstituted tobacco, which is not tobacco at all, but a sprayed tobacco paper product, so even a crappy nicotine-less product can likely be made into something that gives the same flavor.
As for whether it’s economically viable or wise, that’s a completely different issue. Now, they’d have to compete with e-cigs and smoking cessation products. But is it altogether economically unsound? It might help people satisfy an oral fixation while using nicotine patches, very similar to tobacco-less chew products on the market like Smokey Mountain, so I don’t think it’s ridiculous. Cigarettes are already very cheap to make, and much of the cost of a pack comes from taxation and markup. The additional cost of the removal process is probably minimal if you already have a lot of the infrastructure for making reconstituted tobacco, and it can likely be sold with no tobacco tax after nudging the authorities. So there is a market, it’s just a question of how big, and whether it’s worth it to go in that direction when you can go the e-cig route.
