6 August 1 -7, 2024 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents Regardless of which entity initiated this current recall, the FDA, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Texas De- partment of State Health Services have all put out warnings about the Diamond Shru- umz products. As of July 16, there were 69 cases of ill- ness associated with the mushroom edibles across 28 states, including two in Texas. Sixty people reported seeking medical at- tention, 36 were hospitalized and there is one potentially associated death under in- vestigation. Multiple children have also been hospitalized after ingesting the Dia- mond Shruumz edibles. Symptoms have included seizures, cen- tral nervous system depression (loss of con- sciousness, confusions, sleepiness), agitation, abnormal heart rate, hyper/hypo- tension, nausea and vomiting. “FDA is working with the National Asso- ciation of Convenience Stores and the Na- tional Smoke Shop Association to increase awareness of the recall,” the agency said in a July 16 statement. “All Diamond Shruumz- brand products have been recalled and should not be available for sale.” Several shops we called said they had heard about the recall and pulled the items from their shelves. However, Spark Smoke Shop on Garland Road in Dallas was still carrying the products last week when we visited a num- ber of retailers to see if the recalled Dia- mond Shroomz products were still available for sale. An employee at Spark told us the store had heard about the recall but hadn’t had any problems with the products, so it was keeping them on the shelves at that time. The employee said before possibly re- moving them, they’d first have to talk to the owner of the chain of smoke shops. Other shops, like a CBD American Sha- man location in Frisco where we previously bought the edibles, were quick to remove the products. An employee there named Matt, who declined to give his last name, said the products were pulled as soon as he heard about the recall. “That’s not worth it,” he said. “If there’s something going on, it’s not worth keeping it out there. That’s the stuff that gives us a bad name.” Marketing messaging for the Diamond Shruumz products claims they don’t contain psychedelics. However, testing has found that the products did indeed contain psy- chedelic substances, including illegal ones. A few days before the company behind the products initiated the recall on June 27, the FDA tested the edibles and found several substances. Among them was a chemical called 4-ACO-DMT, otherwise known as “synthetic mushrooms.” This chemical will, in fact, make a user trip. The Blue Ridge Poison Center in Char- lottesville, Virginia, conducted its own test- ing of several mushroom edible products, including Diamond Shruumz. The center had seen cases of adverse effects associated with these products, which prompted its in- vestigation. These mushroom products are often marketed as nootropics, substances that can enhance cognitive function, or as psychedelics. Some also claim to contain the substances muscimol, ibotenic acid and muscarine, which come from the amanita muscaria mushroom. The poison center set out to test these products and found some interesting results. The research was pub- lished by the CDC on July 18. Consumers and retailers should avoid these products, according to the FDA. If you see stores continuing to carry Diamond Shruumz edibles or have experienced ad- verse effects from the products, you can file a report with the agency. The CDC is advis- ing people to stay away from products claiming to produce feelings of euphoria, hallucinations or psychedelic effects be- cause they may contain undisclosed ingredi- ents that could be linked to illness. ▼ HIGHER EDUCATION FREEDOM AINT FREE UT DALLAS CHARGES STUDENT JOURNALISTS THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS FOR RECORDS REQUEST. BY EMMA RUBY B y the end of his first day, May 1, as Ed- itor-in-Chief of The Mercury, the stu- dent newspaper at the University of Texas at Dallas, Gregorio Gutierrez had a list of questions. When he submitted them to university officials under the Texas Public Information Act (PIA), he was told the an- swers would cost $8,000. Early in the morning of his first day on the job, a Pro-Palestinian encampment had been set up on the campus and named the Gaza Liberation Plaza by protestors. By mid- afternoon, 21 protesters, including students, faculty and alumni, had been arrested, and Gutierrez was asking whether the university had planned to take legal action from the very beginning. He was asking whether sim- ilar protests across the country had led the university to make plans ahead of the May 1 encampment for how a protest would be handled. He was asking why the protesters, who were arrested on the Dallas County side of the campus, were taken to the Collin County jail to be prosecuted in the more conservative county. Since that day, Gutierrez says campus administrators have failed to respond to stu- dent journalists’ email and phone inquiries about the handling of the student encamp- ment, and have canceled pre-arranged meetings with Mercury staff without offer- ing to reschedule. “We continued to persistently reach out to campus administrators to no avail. The most we got was redirection,” Gutierrez told the Observer. “We are covering the admin directly attacking its students, prosecuting both its students and its professors … We’ve already seen attempts at retaliation made against the paper.” There is a “rocky history” between the university and its independent, student-run newspaper, Gutierrez said. Following the students’ initial coverage of the encamp- ment, The Mercury’s faculty adviser was de- moted and, in a meeting with the newspaper’s staff, the new adviser called their coverage of the encampments “mal- practice,” Gutierrez said. On June 3, the student journalists sub- mitted a collection of keywords and ques- tions to the university under the Public Information Act, which requires the disclo- sure of unreleased documents, emails, text messages and records by public institutions when asked. While it is free to submit a PIA request, searches that produce a large quan- tity of documents and would take a signifi- cant amount of manpower to prepare can result in a fee. “Our Office of Legal Affairs got back to us some weeks after our initial submission asking for over $8,000, which we as a stu- dent newspaper don’t have that kind of money,” Gutierrez said. He believes the exorbitant amount of money was demanded to dissuade the stu- dents from continuing their investigation. While PIA allows for fee waivers if the in- formation is “in the public interest,” UT Dal- las officials declined to grant The Mercury staff a waiver. “The University does not waive any fees for open records requests for any outlet or in- dividual. This has been the standard practice of the University for several years,” a spokes- person for UT Dallas told the Observer. “Fees are assessed according to state law that ac- counts for hours and labor needed to gather and review the documents. University offi- cials have routinely responded to student journalists to assist with their information re- quests and open records requests.” According to the university, The Mercu- ry’s initial records request would have re- quired the review of more than 50,000 documents prior to their release. A revised records request lowered that amount to 20,000 documents. The University told The Mercury staff it will take 450 hours to com- plete the request. The Mercury was able to negotiate the right to review the documents, meaning the records request is pulled together and one individual has a day to go through them manually, but the documents are not sent to the requestor. The right to review cost nearly $3,000, the university decided. So, Gutierrez set up a GoFundMe account to raise money for the documents. The GoFundMe went live on July 14. Within 72 hours, the bulk of the funds had been raised. On July 22, the $3,000 mark was hit. It could still be months before the records are collected for Gutierrez’s re- view, and he has been told by the univer- sity he will be allowed to photograph documents for future reference, during his review period. “It was honestly really wonderful for us as an organization to see how quickly people came in to support us,” Gutierrez said. “It shows that people support [The Mercury staff] despite the lack of support we’re re- ceiving from campus administrators.” A Hostile State for Student Journalists Gutierrez consulted with the Student Press Law Center, a legal resource for student journalists navigating the first amendment rights of the press. The center advised the students not to appeal the records request to the Attorney General, where their case could be shut down completely. “The SPLC did kind of think there is a case here that could be made in other states, but in Texas, just because Attorney General Ken Paxton is the main determiner of this kind of law, it’s highly unlikely that he will side in favor of student journalists pushing against a kind of like narrative that’s been built around attacking protesters,” Gutier- rez said. The Texas Public Information Act went into effect in 1973, but Paul Watler, a board member of Freedom of Information Foun- dation Texas, told The Mercury he believes institutions are becoming increasingly hos- tile to records requests like the one the stu- dent journalists submitted. Extreme events such as mass shootings have incentivized institutions to obscure in- formation and records that should be public knowledge, Watler said. “I think there has been some regression in the law since the 1990s as Texas courts have, in broad terms, generally not ex- panded or reinforced the rights of request- ers,” Watler told The Mercury. “When the Public Information Act was first passed in 1973, the courts generally were more recep- tive to ruling in favor of requesters until these rights peaked sometime in the 1990s Unfair Park from p4 Jacob Vaughn Prophet Premium Blends, the company behind Diamond Shruumz products, announced on its website that the recall prioritizes the health and safety of consumers above all else.
