A pulmonologist's clinical concern has become a cultural one: nicotine, long understood as a cardiovascular and neurological hazard, is being repackaged by wellness marketers as a tool for focus and cognitive performance. The reframing is not merely semantic — it reshapes how ordinary people perceive risk, drawing in consumers who would never consider themselves smokers. Medicine and marketing are now telling different stories about the same substance, and the gap between them carries real consequences for public health.