Nicotine raises blood pressure and is a vasco constrictor.
"Vasoconstriction is the narrowing of the blood vessels resulting from contraction of the muscular wall of the vessels, particularly the large arteries, small arterioles and veins. The process is the opposite of vasodilation, the widening of blood vessels"
Now this can be a good thing to stop hemmoraging - but as a general thing, no, it's not a good idea. However, it is certainly not Cancer, Emphysema, etc.
There is a very good article about it at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotine.
Most of the articles I have seen don't separate nicotine from tobacco, and so confuse the issue we are attempting to deal with.
It also discusses THERAPUTIC EFFECTS of nicotine in certain situations. And cites FDA studies on it.
Now for my DISCLAIMER. I have not done a zillion hours of research on this.. I found this one article that is interesting, and says some of the same things I've seen elsewhere.
However, as most of you know, Information on the Internet is put there by PEOPLE. And PEOPLE posting information don't necessarily do THEIR research. PEOPLE have OPINIONS.. etc etc etc.
Whenever you research anything, you should never take ONE SOURCE as being the end all be all. The same can be said for any kind of research of course, but our main sources are found on the Internet.
I've known a few people to claim that "THE WIKI" is an unblemished source of info on a zillion subjects. Let me just say there isn't just one WIKIPEDIA for one thing. Many folks think anything wiki.blabla.blabla is gospel. Nope.
Secondly, information changes constantly as we learn things. If you don't believe me, just look through an encylopedia from say, 1970. Not only are countries named differently, but everything changes, including history.
There, now I've been all school marmy. I know most of you know all this. Maybe even all of you, this is a very intelligent group of people. But I am soooooo tired of hearing folks cite some website as gospel.
GOOGLE is dangerous if you don't know what you are doing. LMAO I mean just listing what your pee looks like lists everything from "well hydrated" to basically "you'll die tomorrow". Scary stuff. It would be sooooooo easy to become a hypochondriac with all this at my fingertips.
There is a reason doctors have a zillion tests and spend many years in school learning all this. It's not wham bam...you have (insert long scary latin word here).
AANNNNNYway as usual I've gone crazy gabbing and stepping on the soapbox. But I think you'll find the article above interesting.
Somebody SLAP me !!!!! hehe