Trinidad: Citizens giving up cigarettes for marijuana

(Trinidad Guardian) New year, new me, that’s the in­ten­tion of many as they make New Year’s res­o­lu­tions each year.

Ac­cord­ing to In­dra See­gob­in, a laser ther­a­pist, in this coun­try, the two main new year goals of most peo­ple are to lose weight and quit smok­ing.

 
She helps with the smok­ing part by ap­ply­ing laser ther­a­py.

She has been do­ing this for over 12 years at her Joyce Road, Cara­pichaima lo­ca­tion and has helped thou­sands of peo­ple.

Now in 2020, new clients are ask­ing for some­thing a bit dif­fer­ent. She ex­plained that they want to quit smok­ing cig­a­rettes and switch to mar­i­jua­na, par­tic­u­lar­ly now that it has been de­crim­i­nalised in this coun­try.

“They re­alise how dif­fi­cult and ad­dic­tive nico­tine is com­pared to mar­i­jua­na and some are say­ing they pre­fer to smoke mar­i­jua­na than the nico­tine be­cause of the chem­i­cals in­volved in the to­bac­co,” she said.

She told Guardian Me­dia now that peo­ple could smoke up to 30 grammes and not wor­ry about be­ing ar­rest­ed, they are more em­pow­ered and safer with mar­i­jua­na. See­gob­in said it is a per­son­al choice but one she en­dors­es.

The busi­ness, Quit Smok­ing To­day with Laser Treat­ment helps smok­ers quit the habit us­ing “soft” laser tech­nol­o­gy.

“It is no more pow­er­ful than a 60-watt bulb and we tar­get the merid­i­an points in the body where the nico­tine is stored.”

See­gob­in, the man­ag­er said she smoked for 25 years and quit on­ly af­ter she dis­cov­ered laser tech­nol­o­gy abroad. Since then she has re­turned to help peo­ple here at home.

“When you can save a life be­cause I have been there done that and I know what it feels like to be a smok­er and be strug­gling and as a smok­er, we need this ex­tra lit­tle help.”

In­dra said the treat­ment, in ad­di­tion to a psy­cho­log­i­cal as­sess­ment read­ing ma­te­r­i­al and oth­er help­ful tips cost just un­der TT$2,000.