[tulio_ribeiro]

This is wrong. I don't think you searched, but if you did you probably didn't go very far. What you came up (I'm assuming you did search instead of just parroting what everyone else says) from your search is the result of decades or propaganda to demonize tobacco, and nicotine was simply a practical scape goat to go along with it -- well, for a good demonizing marketing campaign to work I guess you need to manufacture or choose an enemy that is easy to spot.

I'm pretty sure there's no double blind, placebo controlled trial contrasting nicotine with cardiovascular health. Simply because for any adverse health effects to come up, it would need to be taken for a very long time, and no one would run such a study. As for tobacco, well, obviously. But it's not really controlled for nicotine, is it?

[ceejayoz]

> I'm pretty sure there's no double blind, placebo controlled trial contrasting nicotine with cardiovascular health. Simply because for any adverse health effects to come up, it would need to be taken for a very long time, and no one would run such a study.

Sure, but the conclusion "therefore we can't know" is invalid. This is what we have observational studies and animal models for. You can absolutely do this in, say, rhesus monkeys and draw some reasonable conclusions if the trial results match up with observational results in humans.

[tulio_ribeiro]

You're absolutely right. The possibility of animal models didn't even cross my mind when writing the above comment. There probably are such studies. I'll look for them and get better informed.