Seventy leading public health experts and anti-tobacco campaigners have urged the World Health Organization to adopt a more sympathetic attitude to ecigarettes and other alternatives to smoking, “which have the potential to bring the epidemic of smoking-caused disease to a more rapid conclusion”.

Their joint letter to Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general, is intended to influence this week’s conference of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in Geneva, which frames international health policy on the issue.