UK plans to pass law banning anyone born after 2008 to buy or smoke cigarettes

Not necessarily. I would certainly consider it “less dangerous” than nicotine by a long shot, but caffeine IS a stimulant. There is research to suggest there may be long-term effects on health, and it IS an addictive substance with withdrawal effects.

The meta-study you brought up has, several issues.

Firstly this research focuses on negative impacts of caffeine, regulations and social aspects about consumption, but not about addiction.

Then we have strong sources backing claims, but not all the claims are backed by reputable or strong sources. For example, it uses a mass marketed book – “The Caffeine Advantage” – that is intended nor has it the factual accuracy to back such claims. To that comes that it lacks completely of any methodology used to search for sources, select the sources and work with them.

A Chinese study about coffee and headaches were completely wrong quoted and the findings of that study were misinterpreted. As well as the use of nonscientific words that have different meaning depending on who reads them. For example detoxification. They compared daily coffee vs. any caffeinated beverage vs. any caffeine studies form different years to find “trends”, however these are three different things, and you can not compare them.

In addition, they confuse correlation with causation.

“Caffeine stimulates the central nervous system, with psychoactive properties that modify behavior like cocaine and amphetamines” Is a direct quote from the paper and this is highly misleading and sensational.

Caffeine works primarily as an adenosine receptor antagonist blocking A1 and A2A receptors. Cocaine, and amphetamines act directly on the dopaminergic reward system. These are completely different pharmacological pathways, not variations on a theme. Cocaine and amphetamines produce strong activation of the mesolimbic reward pathway, which is why they have high abuse liability and are Schedule II controlled substances. Caffeine produces only mild physical dependence with relatively benign withdrawal and is not classified as a substance use disorder in DSM-5.

But dependence != addiction.

Caffeine produces mild dependence but generally does not meet the threshold for a clinically significant addiction in the way alcohol, nicotine, opioids, cocaine, or methamphetamine do.