Two experiments analyzed the role of extinction cues (EC) and stimuli associated to them in the reacquisition of conditioned ethanol tolerance. Ethanol-induced ataxia was measured in 80 rat subjects using a tilting plane, in a 5-phase procedure. The first experiment (which used 4 contexts and 40 rats) showed that the presentation of the extinction context by itself diminished the effectiveness of ECs in reducing response reacquisition. The second experiment (conducted in a single context with 40 rats and using 2 stimulus paired for some subjects or explicitly unpaired for others) showed that a secondary cue can reduce reacquisition, regardless of whether it was paired with the EC or not. The results of mixed and factor analyses of variance suggest that ECs affect response recovery through an association with the extinction context; however, a second-order cue associated to an EC appears to be unable to activate this association.