Smoker’s characteristics, general health and their perception of smoking in the social environment: a study of smokers in Rajshahi City, Bangladesh

BACKGROUND: Smoking is one of the bad habits in social environment and is one of the main causes of immature death in Bangladesh. Rajshahi is one of the cleanest, most peaceful cities in Bangladesh, but the inhabitants often feel uncomfortable about smokers who smoke in public places and often on transport. Smoking frequency is very high among males compared to females, and a large number of smokers are building or road construction laborers and people involved in offering different services such as transportation, vending from vans, etc. The practice of smoking in this area is destructive for mental and physical health especially for students compared to other professionals because the city is known as the City of Education. METHODS: The study analyzes smokers’ characteristics, general health, and their (smokers) perception of smoking in public places. Cross-sectional data were collected randomly from 160 smokers through face-to-face questionnaire survey. The determinants of complexities with regard to social environment and human health were studied using frequency distribution, chi-square test, and binary and multinomial logistic regression analysis using IBM SPSS version 24. RESULTS: Frequency distributions reveal that 93.8% of smokers believe that smoking creates public health hazards, 51.3% of smokers think it causes breathing complexities for non-smokers, 48.8% of smokers feel smoking causes air pollution, 68.8% of smokers think smoking causes gastric problems, 24.4% of smokers had headache problems due to smoking and cigarette fumes, 86.3% of smokers learnt smoking from friends, 48.8% of smokers smoke due to their addiction and 25.6% for depression, and 80.6% usually smoke after having a meal. The chi-square test reveals that class of smokers was significantly associated with frequency of heartbeat rate, starting smoking at specific age level was significantly associated with suffering from diseases, category of smoking articles was significantly associated with suffering from disease, class of smokers was significantly associated with causes for smoking, and starting smoking at specific age level was significantly associated with profession of the smokers at 1% level of significance respectively. A significant odds ratio was found (OR = 6.363, 95% CI 1.918–21.104, p < 0.01) for the profession group of students/labour at 1% level; their outcomes for suffering from diseases such as gastric problem and fever/headache/others were 6.363 times those for the profession group of service/other smokers. CONCLUSION: Smoking in public places should be restricted because non-smokers cannot breathe freely and it is not healthy for them to inhale smoke indirectly, which has many adverse effects on public health. The study also reveals that the majority of the smokers have gastric problems, abnormal heartbeat rates, frequent headaches, depression and addiction problems, etc., and that they believe that smoking causes significant health hazard on human health and social environment. Therefore, necessary interventions should be taken immediately by policy-makers to prevent smoking in public places. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10389-020-01413-w.