## 4 Discussion
However, our study showed a lower percentage of people reporting their intention to quit smoking compared to some other studies. Of Korean adult smokers, 75% were planning to quit [68], and 65 to 81% of smokers in many developed Western countries intended to quit smoking [69]. The Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS) [24] and the International Tobacco Control (ITC) Policy Evaluation Bangladesh Survey [49] have reported that 51.4% of male participants and 36% of all participants, respectively, had planned to quit smoking. The GATS and ITC [24; 49] were conducted among smokers aged 15 years or older after running a smoking cessation campaign for one year to determine the factors associated with quitting smoking. Although our study found a higher proportion of people with an intention to quit smoking than the ITC [49], it was similar to or lower than that in other studies [64; 65; 66; 24; 58; 67; 68; 69]. The proportion intending to quit smoking in our study could be considered very low given that the participants all had chronic hypertension. Quitting smoking has substantial health and social benefits. It dramatically improves blood circulation in vascular systems and lung function, dramatically drops the risk of heart attack, stroke, and cancer, and increases overall physical fitness. Stopping smoking can improve personal lives, which greatly impacts overall well-being [70]. The current research provides an initial picture of the sociodemographic factors associated with the number of cigarettes smoked and intentions to quit in adults in rural Bangladesh. The findings suggest that occupations requiring manual work and people with a lower level of education have low awareness of the harmful effects of smoking. The research demonstrates a need for appropriate interventions for improving motivation to quit smoking and SLT use. In the ITC, participants who intended to quit smoking within one year were younger and with or without any chronic diseases. There are several reasons our study found a lower percentage of people with intentions to quit smoking. In this rural Bangladesh community, there is a lack of public health campaigns focusing on the benefits and harms of quitting smoking, smoking cessation programs (e.g., a quit line or clinic), and available smoking cessation medications. The low rate of quitting intention among Bangladesh adults may be associated with the lack of policy initiatives that could encourage smokers to think about quitting. In Vietnam, tobacco control interventions, such as stipulating places where smoking is not allowed, applying health warnings in text and pictures on cigarette packs, and completely banning tobacco advertising, promotion, and sponsorship, significantly increased the intention to quit smoking [58]. In our study, the proportion intending to quit smoking did not differ significantly across age groups or other socio-demographic factors. However, it was lower among younger age groups, which is consistent with previous studies in Bangladesh [49] and elsewhere [24; 58; 65] but opposite to the results of other studies [24; 71]. Since age is a crucial predictor for starting to smoke or willingness to quit smoking, tobacco control strategies could include intense efforts to disseminate knowledge of the harmful effects of smoking among school and college students to stop them from ever smoking. Another strategy would be to introduce targeted tobacco cessation interventions to increase cessation rates among those who already smoke. A previous study [58] reported that if people are exposed to media channels, obtain information about the harmful effects of smoking, or are encouraged to quit smoking, they are more likely to intend to quit. In our study, the association between a younger age and a lower intention to quit smoking may be partially explained by the fact that no targeted tobacco cessation intervention programs are being conducted in the area [72].