We examined the effects of chronic nicotine exposure and dietary salt upon the arterial blood pressure (BP) changes learned in response to an acute behavioral stress in the Dahl salt-sensitive rat. Four groups were tested: low salt/vehicle; low salt/nicotine; high salt/vehicle; high salt/nicotine. Rats were fed a low-salt (0.08% NaCl) or a high-salt (8% NaCl) diet for 4 weeks; 2.4 mg/kg/day nicotine or vehicle was given via an implanted osmotic minipump for the last 2 weeks. All rats were conditioned by following one tone (CS+) with a ½ sec. tail shock; another tone (CS-) was never followed by shock. CS+ in low salt/vehicle and high salt/vehicle rats evoked an initial arterial BP increase (C₁), a component of the startle response, and an ensuing, smaller, but more sustained, pressor response (C₂) which is acquired with training. In these rats both C₁ and C₂ evoked by CS- were significantly smaller than those to CS+, demonstrating that these groups discriminated between the two tests. Conversely, although the low salt/nicotine treated rats had both the C₁ and C₂ components of the conditional arterial pressure response, they did not discriminate between CS+ and CS-. Finally, the high salt/nicotine group failed both to discriminate between tones and to acquire (i.e., learn) the C₂ response. The unconditional response to shock did not differ between groups. We conclude that combined exposure to high salt and to nicotine inhibits the salt-sensitive animal’s acquisition of a learned conditional BP response, perhaps because nicotine acts preferentially upon those central processes required for associative learning vs. those involved in orientating to external stimuli.