Bad Drugs

Another bad batch of synthetic marijuana hits Austin: 25 people treated since Monday

K2 is being blamed for more than two dozen emergency calls yesterday.

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KVUE — Paramedics with Austin-Travis County EMS said 25 people have had adverse reactions to K2 since 12 pm on Monday.

It is usually labeled and sold in smoke stores as "potpourri," but people who smoke the substance refer to it as K2, "Spice" or "Kush." It is generally a mix of herbs and spices that are typically sprayed with lab-synthesized liquid chemicals to mimic the effect of THC, the psychoactive ingredient in the grows naturally in marijuana plants.

Paramedics say people who ingest it run a high risk of having an adverse reaction. "With K2 or Spice there's a variety of effects, side effects and dangerous components primarily due to unknown or preexisting medical conditions that the patient may or may not know they have," explained ATCEMS Paramedic Rick Rutledge.

Paramedics say they received calls about K2 over the weekend, but a rash of calls came in between 2 pm and 3 pm. "At one point — a couple of hours ago — we had like four or five ambulances on K2 calls at the same time, treating up to eight or nine different patients," said Rutledge. All of the patients were adults. Fifteen were transported to the hospital, two refused treatment and one person ran away.

All 25 cases happened in a six-block radius in downtown that included the area near the Austin Resource Center for the Homeless (ARCH). This isn't the first time K2 has been a problem in downtown Austin. In May, more than 40 people had bad reactions over a few days. Police cracked down, confiscating the substance from people in the area.

Based on what happened six months ago, investigators fear there could be more cases coming because of the bad batch. They are working to find the source, but caution no matter where someone gets K2 it's not safe. Rutledge said the ingredients in the packs sold in stores are not regulated.

"They use chemicals and get no inspections by the FDA or USDA or anybody else who really cares what goes on that. It's not meant for ingestion," said Rutledge.

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To read the full story and to see video of the report, head to KVUE.

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More Foraging

Free 'food forest' in East Austin expands with thousands of new plants

Angelina Alanis at Festival Beach Food Forest

Photo courtesy of KVUE

Angelina Alanis gives a tour of the garden, which is open to anyone.

In East Austin, there is an edible forest garden called Festival Beach Food Forest where anyone can walk around and harvest free produce, nuts, medicinal plant leaves and herbs. And over the summer, it grew to several times its size.

The forest has fig trees, peach trees, grapevines, asparagus and more that's not in season right now. You can grab passionfruit and plants like yaupon holly, with leaves that can make a caffeinated tea, rosemary and lemon balm.

"[Lemon balm] is part of the mint family," said Angelina Alanis, communication and partnership coordinator for Festival Beach Food Forest. "It has a lemony taste but it's good for a nervous stomach. I'm prone to anxiety so I always grab a hunk."

The food forest is located right next to Interstate 35 and Lady Bird Lake on 29 Waller St., near a part of town that's known for being a food desert, lacking grocery stores.

"There's as much as a 20-year life expectancy difference between parts of East and West Austin, and a lot of that comes down to food access, health care access and also access to nature."

Alanis said for the past nine years, the volunteer-based grassroots project been helping with the issue and just recently expanded in the summer from two-thirds of an acre of city parkland to over 3.5 acres.

"We're going to have hundreds of new trees," said Alanis. "We've already planted 150 new trees in the area and then thousands of plants on the ground."

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They also plan to add a community kitchen and a pavilion to do things like cooking classes or informational sessions.

Read the full story at KVUE.com.

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