This is part of the problem--but it isn't making the player weaker in the long term, it reduces the growth of player skill. Which amounts to the same thing as what you're describing, but a little more indirectly.

The bigger issue for me is that IAP pushers are not selling something the user decides they want, they're selling something that the pusher has manipulated the user into deciding that they need by changing the environment around them. It's not even in the same bucket as marketing (which sucks), but rather the outright control of the player's experience to drive them towards consumable IAP. There's no way that's not malicious.