WHO calls for banning e-cigarettes

The world's leading health watchdogs have been urging the UK to consider banning electronic cigarettes from public places.

According to a World Health Organisation report, countries could ban e-cigarettes from all public places where smoking was not allowed.

A ban of the kind would see the increasingly popular vaping devices banned from schools, hospitals and public transport like tobacco.

The WHO had called on countries to consider this due to the dangers of 'passive vaping', which, according to growing evidence was linked to damage, heart complications and stillbirth in pregnant women.

The move comes after similar calls by the British Medical Association (BMA), which said e-cigarettes should be banned from pubs and restaurants because of just such dangers. The WHO had also backed  cigarette-style health warnings about the chemicals contained in e-cigarettes and information on the danger of addiction.

The organisation's advice, which comes ahead of a major meeting on tobacco control in India next week, is expected to stoke a row between health experts.

Some evidence had emerged linking e-cigarettes to cancer and fears they led to smoking tobacco.

However, the public health community is split over whether e-cigarettes were harmful or harmless and some have expressed outrage at the WHO's advice to the meeting. 

According to commentators, doctors in the UK were already using e-cigarettes to help people quit tobacco, with support from Public Health England, if the devices were licensed, to prescribe them on the NHS.

According to the WHO report, countries might also want to ban nicotine delivery devices from all public places where smoking was not allowed, require health warnings about the chemicals in them, include information on the addictive potential of nicotine and ban any claims that they can help people give up tobacco smoking.