A fully open access supplement of Tobacco Control is now available. With 20 articles contributed by 27 authors it is rich with ideas and possibilities.

Dr Kenneth Warner sets the scene for this themed supplement:

In this supplement, some of the world’s most brilliant tobacco control scholars, strategists and activists, including those who originated the principal endgame concepts, offer a wide range of observations pertinent to contemplating the endgame. With other colleagues, these authors gathered together in Ann Arbor, Michigan, last June at a workshop hosted by the University of Michigan School of Public Health to contemplate the very notion of an endgame and to debate the merits of the various endgame proposals brought to light to date. The workshop was sponsored by grants from the American Legacy Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, who also sponsored the development and distribution of this supplement. On behalf of the workshop organisers and participants and the supplement authors, I express our deep gratitude to these visionary organisations for their willingness to encourage thinking outside the box.

The papers published in this volume are not the proceedings of the workshop, although they certainly reflect both the subject matter covered and the diversity of issues and perspectives that characterised the lively proceedings.

The goal of the workshop—and indeed the goal of this supplement—was never to produce a consensus on any of the challenging questions that pervade the subject of the tobacco endgame; it is far too early to do so. Rather, as one participant put it, the intent of the workshop was to serve as ‘an intellectual ice-breaker’ for the field of endgame studies. We hope this supplement will play a similar role for the broader tobacco control community, opening up the debate, enlisting a wider array of tobacco control and public health professionals, and thereby hastening the determination of answers to the challenging questions. While we struggle today with often widely divergent perspectives and beliefs, we all share the same vision of the final words to this story: ‘The end’.