Rationale and objective Studies indicate that nicotine enhances some aspects of attention and executive functioning and attenuates the attentional salience of emotionally negative distractors. The purpose of this study was to assess whether nicotine can enhance executive control over prepotent responses in emotional contexts in nonsmokers and whether such enhancement is greater in individuals with low baseline performance. Methods The antisaccade task (AST) measures the inhibition of the tendency to glance in the direction of the onset of a visual stimulus and thus is an index of control over prepotent responses. Ten male and 14 female nonsmokers wore a nicotine and placebo patch on counterbalanced days that included emotional picture primes and targets. Results There were significant beneficial effects of nicotine on antisaccade reaction time (RT). These beneficial effects occurred in individuals with poor- and average-baseline performance, but not in high baseline performers. In slow baseline-RT individuals nicotine reduced RTs associated with negative targets in the left visual field (VF) and reduced RTs associated with positive and neutral targets in the right VF. In contrast, in the average baseline group, nicotine reduced RTs for positive targets in both VFs and neutral targets in the left VF. Conclusions The results suggest that nicotine may produce its effects by enhancing executive functions and that the differential effects as a function of VF, target emotion, and group may also reflect lateralized differences in the effects of nicotine on brain reactivity to emotional stimuli.