SYRACUSE, N.Y. (NCC News) — The Onondaga County Health Department reports an increase in substance use during the holiday season.
The season “can trigger both good and bad forms of emotions and stress, which can cause increased rates of substance use,” the county’s Health Commissioner said in a statement posted on the Health Department’s website.
Those substances like tobacco, account for more deaths each year than deaths resulting from HIV/AIDS, illegal drug use, alcohol use, motor vehicle injuries, suicides and murders combined, according to the Health Department.
Some companies offer alternatives to smoking tobacco.
“Cigarettes, tobacco a lot of the medications especially opioids are the most obvious example, but a lot of these medications they’re not necessarily healing,” Cannabis Specialist Mickey Dodge from Syracuse Hemporium (a store that educates people on hemp) said.
“They’re treating symptoms, but they are not necessarily treating the underlying solution and they have different effects on your body,” Dodge said.
As a result of the high volume of smokers in Syracuse, Dodge sells holistic alternatives to tobacco like hemp flower strains. These products are infused with Cannabidiol (also known as CBD, the chemical derived from the hemp plant).
“Most of them are sourced organically, here in New York from different New York companies,” Dodge said.
Dodge manages the daily operations at Syracuse Hemporium, selling both cannabis and THC (the crystalline compound that is the main active ingredient of cannabis) products ranging from gummy bears to body oils.
“There’s four metabolic pathways that you can take the CBD,” Dodge said. “The first is on the skin, a lot of people with chronic pain, if they put a sav or a lotion directly on the skin, many of them will report sometimes immediately that the pain is gone or at least lessened.”
Dodge said cannabis products can be taken orally, applied topically or inhaled.
“Smoking … gets into your bloodstream directly, instantly almost, through the lungs but it’s short-lasting,” Dodge said. “The other option is you could take oils to put oils underneath the tongue, hold it there for a couple of minutes. [The oils absorb] through the mucus membranes. It takes a little bit longer than smoking to enter your bloodstream, but you get a longer-lasting effect.”
Dodge also sells cannabis-infused chocolates, cookies and honey.
“You ingest them, you just eat them and it will take one or two hours for it to works its way through your system,” Dodge said. “But because the way the body processes it, it’s going to create a more intense, stronger effect on the body and it’s going to last longer — six to eight hours.”
While Dodge advocates for hemp products, hypnotist Debrah Kelly from Alternative Hypnosis (an organization that offers hypnotherapy) uses smoke-cessation techniques to help people break their cigarette addictions.
“A lot of clients become addicted because they watched people in their life that they have a lot of respect for like their parents or an older sibling smoke and then as they get older and they observe these people in these stressful situations smoking, they take on the habit as well,” Kelly said.
Kelly said by the time many people reach out to her for help quitting cigarettes, their health is already compromised.
“Normally when they come in, they are very motivated to quit smoking because they are currently experiencing some sort of negative health effect from that,” Kelly said. “Whether it be they actually come in with Cancer or they come in with an oxygen tank or they are just starting to have breathing problems and other issues.”
Kelly said most clients come into Alternative Hypnosis after witnessing a loved one who is becoming very ill from smoking begin to deteriorate, which acts as a urgent, call to take action.
