Remember: Primary Sources!

I've been encountering short synopses of this article all weekend ("Nicotine Decreases Blood Alcohol Concentrations in Adult Rats"), and have been thoroughly confused. See, I'd been seeing all the chatter about it claiming it keeps you from getting drunk, but that didn't make any sense because nicotine just seems to slow gastric emptying, which means that the alcohol will all hit you eventually. So finally, I gave in and tracked down the article:

Conclusions: These results suggest that the nicotine-induced decrease in BAC may be related to gastric function. One possible explanation was related to nicotine's action in delaying gastric emptying. The longer the alcohol was retained in the stomach, the more likely that the alcohol would be metabolized by gastric alcohol dehydrogenase before its absorption into the bloodstream by the small intestine (the major site of alcohol absorption).

See? Nice and simple. Remember to check your primary sources, kids. It'll keep you off the streets and out of trouble.