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I hope you don’t mind my contacting you personally, but I hoped to engage you directly with my response to your piece in The Guardian.

First let me say that I’m pleased that you’re attempting to keep an open mind on the issue. I hope you’ll be receptive to my offering a different perspective on medical regulation.

It’s worth stating that I’m one of those million plus Brits who’ve adopted e-cigarettes as an alternative to smoking, and personally I’ve broken my habit of buying a packet of cigarettes each day to my current happy position of not having bought a pack in three months. With regard to your closing question I’d say I’m happy to be ‘tobacco free’ and I’ve no concern to be ‘nicotine free.


Regarding medicalisation, then - to which I’m opposed as raising the barrier to entry both to other potential adopters and to innovation within the devices market, which is currently frenzied - let me state my case by analogy.

Caffeine is a legal stimulant like nicotine, and not without (very similar) health concerns - those with notable reason to be cautious are those with high blood pressure or heart problems. For my part I have no particular worries about my use of nicotine and caffeine.

As in the current e-cigarette market, caffeine is delivered in both commodity pre-prepared form (e.g. what we tend to call cig-a-likes versus carbonated drinks, both available in news agents, and instant coffee), in ‘gourmet’ form (coffee shops and vaping shops that offer both ‘ready to use’ and basic devices for home preparation) and in somewhat specialist high-end devices usually together with ‘DIY’ preparation of ingredients. With a background in research science it’s perhaps no surprise that I tend towards the latter in both cases.

Now, regarding your statement about concerns of "inconsistent in standards and nicotine delivery", ‘cig-a-likes’ - the small disposable devices that look like cigarettes, on which the debate too often focuses - appear troublesome, I’m happy to concede. They’re unreliable devices due to their small batteries and their stated measurements are not wholly useful, quoting the mg/ml concentration of nicotine in the contained liquid, but often neither listing the quantity of this, nor able to vapourise all of this due to unreliable battery discharge. Here, the carbonated caffeine drinks seem to be better. Looking more widely though, how many independent coffee shops could tell me the caffeine concentration in their coffee (or tea)? Try it. The answer I’ve found is none. How many instant coffees tell you the caffeine levels in the jar, let alone help one compute the caffeine in a cup? I just looked (in the kitchen at work); again, none.

Regarding the ‘mid-market’, more credible to developing coffee fans and vapers alike, I would point out that such caffeine-delivery devices as Nespresso, Tassimo and Dolce Gusto do not deliver consistent results and their doses of caffeine are often not documented or, where they are, reliable. While it’s true that different e-cigarette devices may deliver nicotine at variant rates of absorption, at least the nicotine-based e-liquid is wholly vapourised so that the nicotine in the vapour is precisely measured (the devices beyond cig-a-likes most often have ‘clearomizers’ where the amount of liquid vapourised is quite accurately measured in tenths of a millilitre).

When it comes to higher-end devices, I both roast my own coffee and mix my own ‘e-liquid’. In the latter case I can tell you exactly what the strength of the liquid, made from pharmaceutically-licensed ingredients is. Regarding my coffee, I simply have no idea; here both the roast and the brew are so variable that I cannot have a hope to know.


The sole reason consumer devices for nicotine delivery are held up to higher scrutiny are that the active ingredient they deliver is the same one contained in a plant leaf that, when burned and inhaled, causes health problems due to the smoke's other ingredients. Is this fair? If we found out tomorrow that tea was cancer-causing, would coffee suddenly become subject to such draconian medical licensing?

If you’ll indulge me, this specific analogy can be furthered, based directly on Coca Cola. While Coca Cola has caffeine in a highly measured dose, it is still produced using coca leaves - though these days decocainised - and these produce oral cancers via their traditional means of consumption (chewing).

If the debate is down to this association with the traditional form (cf. cigarette smoking) then, may I suggest, if you’ll forgive my being facetious to make a point, that Coca Cola, and by extension coffee and tea, be immediately subject to medical licensing?