NEWS
NEWS
WE MUST ALL WORK TOGETHER TO AVOID SQUANDERING ONE OF THE GREATEST PUBLIC HEALTH ADVANCES OF THE MODERN WORLD . By Marina Murphy , BAT
HISTORY HAS SHOWN US THAT THE MOST COMPLICATED CHALLENGES ARE BEST ADDRESSED WITH AS MANY DIFFERENT VIEWPOINTS BEING INPUTTED AS POSSIBLE . AS THE SAYING GOES , ‘ TWO HEADS ARE BETTER THAN ONE ’ ( THREE , FOUR , FIVE … EVEN BETTER !)
The famous explorer Sir Walter Raleigh is credited with bringing tobacco to England from Virginia in 1586 . A few years later , coffee arrived ( The World of Caffeine ) and Britain ’ s first coffee shop opened in Oxford in 1637 . However , the real ‘ coffee revolution ’ happened in the late 1600s and early 1700s , started by a Greek , Pasqua Rosee , who opened the first coffee house in 1652 . By 1660 there were about 3,000 coffee houses in London . Men ( mostly ) came to gossip , debate , make deals , smoke clay pipes and drink coffee of course ! Coffee houses became so important to doing business that some of those original establishments are the origins of the likes of the now world-famous Lloyds of London insurance market , the London Stock Exchange , and the auctioneers Christies and Sotherbys . But you can be sure that the original coffee houses didn ’ t have the mile-long menus that we see everywhere today . Walk into any coffee 34 ISSUE 08 VAPOUROUND MAGAZINE shop ( be it a chain or an independent ) and you are presented with any number of cappuccinos , lattes , flat whites , macchiatos , mochas , expressos , etc . At one time , a coffee was just a coffee . But the modern consumer has become more and more demanding and companies recognised that in order to keep them interested , they had to create more choice and they did .
PSYCHOACTIVE SUBSTANCES :
Chemicals that can alter the consciousness and mood . Caffeine , the active ingredient in coffee , and nicotine , the active ingredient in tobacco , are in the same family of chemicals , the alkaloids . But they have more in common than that . They are also the most popular psychoactive substances in the world . After all , around 90 % of Americans enjoy a cup of coffee in the morning . And who can ’ t have noticed the proliferation of coffee shops on the high street in the past few years ? The result is a massive growth in the amount of money people spend on coffee – growth that has outstripped growth in income ( since 2010 ). As for nicotine , about 20 % of the global population are thought to be smokers . That ’ s a lot of caffeine and nicotine . While caffeine has always been delivered in fairly inoffensive ways – just add boiling water – nicotine has the issue
of what some have called its ‘ noxious host ’ … burning tobacco . As Professor Martin Russell famously said : ‘ People smoke for the nicotine and die for the tar .’ A lot of time and money has been spent trying to solve the problem of how to make a burning cigarette safer , but ultimately the answer is rooted in getting rid of combustion altogether .
THE MODERN COFFEE REVOLUTION
Market Fragmentation : Emergence of new segments in a previously homogenous market Caffeine stimulates the central nervous system , warding off drowsiness and increasing alertness . It has been famously used in Coca Cola for decades , but in the last decade , caffeine has been at the centre of the development of a plethora of new and exciting caffeinebased drinks . If one laid them all out you could draw a ‘ caffeine spectrum ’ ( figure 1 ) with the simplest , the espresso , at one end through the milk containing lattes and cappuccinos right down through soft drinks and finally arriving at energy drinks . And then off the scale altogether with the decaffeinated versions . Now consider the case for tobacco and nicotine . A similar spectrum would see the simplest product , the cigarette , at one end of a spectrum . Tobacco heating products would be next , then oral smokeless products like Snus , and