Latest news with #UtahCounty
Daily Mail
16-05-2025
- Health
- Daily Mail
State with squeaky clean image grappling a VERY surprising addiction epidemic... it's not fast food or drugs
A surprising US state is battling a crippling addiction crisis —but it's not fueled by alcohol, drugs, or fast food. In Utah, the substance of choice for hundreds of thousands of residents is soda. And not just the occasional can — many drink it in astonishing quantities. YouTuber Tyler Oliveira decided to investigate the effect that the sugary drinks are having on the population and what inspired the craze. In his film, one man named Steve Kinyon admits sometimes he guzzles more than 5 gallons of diet soda a day and he spends $300 a week on soda alone. Steve, a father-of-two with over 66,000 Instagram followers on his food-centric account, says even his young sons — ages four and two — love soda. His wife, Kephren, is 'concerned' about the habit. Tyler explains that the state's large Mormon population plays a central role. Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are typically forbidden from drinking alcohol and hot caffeinated drinks like coffee or tea. But soda, especially cold caffeinated soda, falls into a gray area — one that many Utahns have embraced enthusiastically. Enter 'Dirty Sodas,' a wildly popular beverage trend in the state. These are essentially soda-based mocktails, with concoctions made using base sodas like Dr Pepper, Sprite, or Coca-Cola, spiked with flavored syrups, purées, creams, and fruit. 'These are basically cocktails without the alcohol,' one woman explains in Oliveira's documentary. A popular pick at the soda drive-thru chain Swig is the Mojito Mama, a tropical mix of lemonade, coconut purée, coconut cream, mint, and fresh lime. A 44oz cup can pack more than 600 calories — comparable to a fast food meal. But while many in the community view their vice as much safer than drugs or alcohol, copious amounts of soda has its risks. Obesity, diabetes, increased blood pressure, and kidney disease are just some of the hazards. Meanwhile, caffeine in caffeinated soda drinks can cause anxiety, increased heart rate and higher blood pressure. Along with the health impact of drinking so much soda, there is also a financial repercussion. 'If he started going into debt for this, it would be divorce,' Kephren says in one scene, as Steve is seen unloading a haul of soda from the trunk of his car. When Oliveira visits several soda drive-thrus across Utah one morning, he finds long lines and loyal customers who say they rely on their daily fix. One woman reveals her boss drinks two 44oz sodas every day. Another says her workplace caters to the habit with built-in 'soda breaks.' She tells Tyler outside a drive-thru in the largely Mormon city of Provo: '[Soda is] literally people's entire world. 'I'm [working] at an office right over here. We shut down twice a day so that everybody can go get their dirty sodas.' Meanwhile, one man likens soda culture in Utah to coffee culture in other parts of the world, but he highlights that soda culture is even more unique as it is 'much more customizable'. 'There's nothing else like it,' he says. But while it may feel like a harmless cultural quirk, the habit could be taking years off people's lives. A University of Michigan study found that just two sugar-sweetened beverages per day could cost someone 24 minutes of life expectancy. Over time, that adds up. If someone starts drinking soda at age five and continues for 50 years, they could lose nearly a year off their life — about 304 days. Many people reveal that they drink soda on a daily basis and one woman says that her boss drinks two 44oz servings a day According to a report from the National Center for Health Statistics, roughly half of Americans over the age of two drink two sugary beverages a day on average. The health risks are well documented: added sugars are linked to obesity, certain cancers, chronic kidney disease, and heart disease. And even artificial sweeteners may carry similar risks. Commenting on the University of Michigan findings, food safety expert Dr Darin Detwiler previously told 'This study reinforces that making small, consistent changes in beverage habits may add years to life expectancy and improve overall health.' He added: 'Taking this study literally, a healthy 20-year-old person — whose life expectancy may be 79 years — who starts drinking two sodas a day may, according to the study, lose three to four years of life due to the impacts of those drinks.' Still, Dr Detwiler emphasized that the study's findings are 'observational not scientific,' meaning they don't prove a direct cause-and-effect relationship. Even so, he urges the public to take the results seriously. 'Cutting out soda or reducing consumption might extend life expectancy,' he said. 'But one thing that is for sure, is that removing these sugary drinks will definitely improve your quality of life, including reducing risks of heart disease, diabetes, and other chronic illnesses.' He also points to better weight management and overall health as benefits of quitting soda, using a vivid analogy: 'Think of soft drink consumption as driving a car without regular maintenance. 'While it doesn't guarantee a breakdown, over time the likelihood of a serious problem increases—especially if combined with other unhealthy habits.' Dr. Detwiler added that the findings could support new public health messaging: 'Perhaps this study could support public awareness campaigns about risks. I could also see this as a driving force behind policies to reduce soft drink availability in schools and workplaces.' For now, Utah's Dirty Soda craze shows no signs of slowing down. But with new health warnings and rising awareness of the long-term costs, the state's sugar-fueled habits may soon be put to the test.
Yahoo
19-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
A Federal Judge in Utah Orders Local Officials To Return a Religious Group's Psychedelic Sacrament
When Bridger Lee Jensen opened a spiritual center in Provo, Utah, he contacted city officials to let them know what would be happening there: The religious group he had founded, Singularism, would be conducting ceremonies involving a tea made from psilocybin mushrooms. "Singularism is optimistic that through partnership and dialogue, it can foster an environment that respects diversity and upholds individual rights," Jensen wrote in a September 2023 letter to the Provo City Council and Mayor Michelle Kaufusi. Jensen, who wanted to "establish an open line of communication" with local officials, said he would be happy to answer their questions and invited them to visit the center. Jensen's optimism proved to be unfounded. The city did not respond to his overture until more than a year later, when Provo police searched the Singularism center and seized its sacrament: about 450 grams of "mushrooms and mushroom-like material" that the group kept inside a locked safe. The seizure was the result of an investigation in which an undercover officer posed as a would-be Singularism facilitator. That raid happened on November 11, 2024, less than eight months after Utah Gov. Spencer Cox had signed the state's version of the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). That law likely protects Singularism's psychedelic rituals, a federal judge ruled last month. U.S. District Judge Jill Parrish granted Jensen's request for a preliminary injunction against city and county officials, ordering them to return the mushrooms and to refrain from further interference with the group's "sincere religious use of psilocybin" while the case is pending. "In this litigation, the religious-exercise claims of a minority entheogenic religion put the State of Utah's commitment to religious freedom to the test," Parrish writes in Jensen v. Utah County. If such a commitment "is to mean anything," she says, it must protect "unpopular or unfamiliar religious groups" as well as "popular or familiar ones." Parrish notes that "the very founding of the State of Utah reflects the lived experience of that truth by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints." In light of that history, she suggests, "it is ironic" that "not long after enacting its RFRA to provide special protections for religious exercise, the State of Utah should so vigorously deploy its resources, particularly the coercive power of its criminal-justice system, to harass and shut down a new religion it finds offensive practically without any evidence that [the] religion's practices have imposed any harms on its own practitioners or anyone else." That vigorous deployment of law enforcement resources included drug charges that Utah County Attorney Jeffrey Gray filed against Jensen in December, five days after Parrish issued a temporary restraining order based on her initial assessment of the case. The defendants also sought to strengthen their criminal case with discovery requests that Parrish deemed "offensively overbroad." They wanted to know, for example, "each instance where Jensen consumed drugs prohibited by the Controlled Substances Act between 2015 and the present." They also sought "documents sufficient to identify each individual to whom Plaintiffs have administered psilocybin from 2019 to present." Those requests, Parrish notes, "concerned criminal conduct far in the past and effectively demanded Singularism to disclose the identities of all individuals who had affiliated with the religion." She thought "the sheer breadth of the requests" suggested that the defendants were trying to use discovery in the civil case to "investigate Plaintiffs for the pending state criminal case—a patently improper purpose." Parrish notes that her injunction "does not prevent the government from continuing to prosecute Mr. Jensen in the pending state criminal case." Nor does it address Jensen's argument that his group's activities are protected by the federal and state constitutions. Parrish is delaying consideration of those issues until April 11, giving Utah Attorney General Derek Brown a chance to "present evidence or argument on the constitutional questions should he wish to do so." But because Parrish concluded that Jensen is likely to prevail on his RFRA claim, her order does bar the defendants from continuing to "harass" his group. The federal RFRA, which Congress enacted in 1993, codified the religious freedom test that the U.S. Supreme Court applied prior to its 1990 ruling in Employment Division v. Smith, which involved the use of peyote by members of the Native American Church. Under that test, the government may not "substantially burden a person's exercise of religion," even by applying "a rule of general applicability," unless it shows that the burden is "the least restrictive means" of furthering a "compelling governmental interest." In the 2006 case Gonzales v. O Centro Espírita Beneficente União do Vegetal, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that RFRA protected the American branch of a syncretic Brazil-based church from federal interference with its rituals, even though the group's sacramental tea, ayahuasca, contained the otherwise illegal psychedelic drug dimethyltryptamine. That precedent invited other groups to make similar claims—often unsuccessfully, depending on what courts made of their professed beliefs. In the 1997 case City of Boerne v. Florida, the Supreme Court ruled that RFRA was unconstitutional as applied to state and local governments. Laws like Utah's, which 29 states have enacted, aim to fill that gap. The defendants in Jensen v. Utah County argued that Utah's RFRA did not apply to Singularism, which they portrayed as a drug trafficking operation disguised as a religion. Parrish rejected that characterization. "Based on all the evidence in the record," she wrote, "the court has no difficulty concluding that Plaintiffs are sincere in their beliefs and that those beliefs are religious in nature." Parrish notes that the Utah Division of Professional Licensing rejected a complaint that Jensen was "practicing mental-health therapy without a license." The agency agreed with him that, as "a facilitator at Singularism," he was exempt from the licensing requirement because he was a "recognized member of the clergy." The city of Provo likewise told Jensen his spiritual center did not need a business license to "conduct its religious activities." Parrish also considered testimony from Jensen and other members of the group, all of whom "connected their practice of Singularism to their faith journeys," describing how "the tea ceremonies had helped them rediscover their religious faith." And she concluded that Singularism features several "accoutrements of religion"—one of the factors that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit (which includes Utah) has said judges should consider in religious freedom cases. "Most simply, [Singularism] has prophets and a scripture," Parrish writes. "As Mr. Jensen explained, during a tea ceremony, the voyager is a prophet receiving spiritual insight, and the facilitator serves as a scribe to record those insights; thus, the recordings from every voyage individually and collectively become Singularism's sacred scripture. On top of that, the tea ceremony is a carefully organized and guarded ritual. The voyager must first pass a screening to ensure his sincerity, and during the prep session, he sets an intention for the voyage. Other preparations for the tea ceremony could include something more familiar from larger religions, such as fasting and reading and internalizing one's patriarchal blessing." The defendants objected that "Singularism 'does not claim special access to divine truths,' instead encouraging its practitioners to more deeply 'discover and define their own beliefs,' and explicitly states that 'no organization, including [it], has all the answers to life's most difficult questions.'" But Parrish concluded that "it would be inappropriate to hold Singularism's existential humility against it," since that attitude "is important for enabling and supporting the smooth functioning of a pluralistic society like ours." The defendants thought "Singularism's citations to scientific and medical research on the therapeutic potential of psilocybin" undermined its claim to be a religion. "An overlap between scientific and religious reasons for a practice" does not make that practice "any less religious," Parrish writes. "Indeed, many religious practices in more common religions, such as gathering in community for music, prayer, and fellowship, can be justified by a litany of nonreligious reasons and scientific research." The defendants noted that Singularism charges people "about $1,600 per tea ceremony," which far exceeds the marginal cost of the psilocybin. Although that "admittedly looks suspicious at first," Parrish says, Jensen's current annual income of $40,000 or so is about a third of what he earned in his former occupation as a "licensed mental-health practitioner." If Jensen "were actually motivated by the promise of large profits," she says, "he would not have given up a stable six-figure salary to found Singularism and receive a monthly payment that barely puts him past the poverty line." Parrish also notes that "for-profit businesses can claim religious-liberty protections," as the Supreme Court held in the 2014 case Burwell v. Hobby Lobby. She adds that "prominent religions like the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which no one would doubt qualifies for religious-liberty protections under the law, require payment of tithes for good-standing membership." In Parrish's view, "Plaintiffs have established that the government has substantially burdened their sincere religious exercise. Simply put, Plaintiffs offer a sacramental psilocybin tea to their voyagers, who then embark on a spiritual journey by which they write their own scripture. A law that categorically prohibits the possession and use of the psilocybin sacrament—thereby preventing Singularism's adherents from pursuing their spiritual voyages and hindering them from producing their sacred scripture—substantially burdens the free exercise of Singularism and its adherents." To justify that burden, the defendants cited various public safety concerns, including potential diversion of psilocybin and the possibility that mushrooms "may be tainted and therefore cause harm to even sincere users." But "the government has not shown evidence of actual contamination or actual diversion," Parrish says. Parrish notes that the mushrooms used by Jensen's group are legally produced in Oregon, which allows psilocybin consumption at state-licensed businesses. The mushrooms are tested for contaminants by an Oregon lab "before being freeze dried for transportation to Singularism's spiritual center." Parrish adds that "only facilitators have access to the mushrooms (which are never used other than in the sacramental tea ceremonies), and every voyager must undergo a careful screening process with two or more facilitators, at least one of whom has a background in medicine or clinical therapy." In 15 months of ceremonies, she says, only one person with "an undisclosed mental-health issue" had a bad trip, which the center handled appropriately by "ensuring that she received the treatment she needed at the hospital." Is shutting Singularism down the "least restrictive means" of addressing the government's concerns? Parrish thought not. "The most obvious alternative at hand is for the government to simply do nothing," Parrish writes. "After all, the government waited over a year after Singularismopened its spiritual center—at which time Mr. Jensen had fully disclosed Singularism'spractices—to perform its criminal investigation. Defendants have pointed to zero evidence that this do-nothing period threatened its interests in public safety." Even "assuming that some form of regulation is necessary for the government to protect the public," Parrish says, two exceptions in the Utah Controlled Substances Act point the way to less restrictive options. The law recognizes "a religious exemption for peyote," she notes, and the defendants "do not attempt to explain why the government could not create a similar exemption for sincere religious use of psilocybin." Amendments approved in 2024 established another exemption, for "psylocibin administered as part of behavioral health treatment programs developed by certain healthcare systems." Those provisions, Parrish notes, impose "relatively few restrictions on how covered healthcare systems may use psilocybin." She says the defendants "do not attempt to explain why the government could not implement an analogous system of oversight for Singularism's sincere religious practices." A more skeptical judge might have reached a different conclusion in this case. Jason Adelstone, an attorney at Harris Sliwoski, notes that Parrish's decision "expands the traditional understanding of sincere religious belief." She acknowledges, for example, that "Singularism does not follow a rigid set of prescribed beliefs but instead encourages adherents to explore their own spiritual experiences, making each participant their own prophet." Parrish also "rejected arguments that the reliance on scientific and medical principles in psilocybin ceremonies meant the group was operating more like a clinic than a religion." If upheld on appeal, Adelstone suggests, the decision "could pave the way for the recognition of new religious movements that incorporate psychedelics as a sacrament, offering a framework for how such beliefs may be evaluated moving forward." Singularism—which advertises "safe, evidence-based psilocybin therapy through clinically informed and spiritually guided ceremonies" aimed at "healing, personal growth, or profound spiritual insight"—straddles the line between religion and psychotherapy. Then again, that line can be pretty hazy, and trying to police it invites unseemly judicial inquiries into the sincerity and authenticity of people's beliefs. "If you wanted to highlight the absurdity of the drug war," Reason's C.J. Ciaramella notes, "it would be hard to find a better example than charging federal narcs with parsing the religious beliefs of groups like the Vine of Light Church." That Arizona group attracted unwanted attention from the Drug Enforcement Administration because it sponsored "monthly meetings at which paying guests drank ayahuasca." I agree with Ciaramella that "it should not matter whether would-be ayahuasca drinkers sincerely believe in shamanism or simply believe they will derive mental health benefits from the experience." Nor should it matter whether people seek that experience simply out of curiosity or an interest in self-exploration untethered from "mental health benefits" that a psychiatrist might recognize. But in Utah and nearly every other state, such distinctions still matter. And in that context, decisions like this one count as a partial victory for pharmacological freedom. The post A Federal Judge in Utah Orders Local Officials To Return a Religious Group's Psychedelic Sacrament appeared first on
