[Smoking cessation attitudes among adult smokers]

The failure of attempts to quit smoking was the cause of stagnation even the increasing prevalence of smoking in Tunisia. The aim of our study was to describe the previous quit attempts among smokers, the degree of motivation to the next stop and analyze the associated factors.

We carried out a survey based on an anonymous selfadministered questionnaire on tobacco, targeting smokers who participated in awareness sessions conducted in public places and universities in the city of Monastir.

Nine hundred fourteen smokers had participated in our study. More than 2/3 of them (70 %) had at least one quit attempt, which lasted longer than 6 months for 81 patients (9%) and the last attempt dated for over 6 months for 486 smokers (53%). These previous attempts were unaccompanied and non-medicalized in 97 % of cases. 2/3 of smokers (67%) had a very strong desire to quit smoking, and 41% had a very strong self-confidence to succeed in their attempts. According to multivariate analysis, the presence of previous quit attempts to stop was statistically related to the importance of quitting smoking (OR=2.20,95% CI [1.23 - 3.96]). Selfconfidence to successfully stop was statistically related to the duration of smoking (OR=1.03 , 95% CI [1.01 - 1.06] ) , the strong dependence (OR=0.53 ;95% CI [ 0.29 - 0.97 ]) , and having at least one smoking member of the family (OR = 0.36 , 95% CI [0.15 - 0.86]).

These results show that the strong physical dependence is a major factor related to the failure of attempts to quit, to the loss of self-confidence to succeed new attempts among smokers and thus, maintain a fairly high smoking prevalence in a country like Tunisia.