Amsterdam store owners fear ban on "magic" psychedelic mushrooms - by Toby Stirling
The famously liberal Netherlands has been swinging toward the right, cracking down on immigration, religious freedoms and the freewheeling red-light district. The next possible target? Magic mushrooms.
The death of a 17-year-old French girl, who jumped from a building after eating psychedelic mushrooms while on a school visit, has ignited a campaign to ban the fungi — sold legally at so-called "smartshops" as long as they're fresh.A 1971 U.N. convention on psychotropic substances banned psilocybin, the main active ingredient in mushrooms, in its purified form. But the legal status of mushrooms themselves was long unclear. Over the last six years, they have been outlawed in Denmark, Japan, Britain and Ireland. It is also illegal to sell psilocybin-containing mushrooms in all U.S. states, but the status of spores, homegrown and wild species varies from state to state. Peter Van Dijk, a researcher at the Netherlands' independent Trimbos Institute of Mental Health and Addiction, said risks grow if mushrooms are combined with alcohol or cannabis, or if people already have psychiatric problems.
A study published in January by Amsterdam's health services said the city's emergency services were summoned 148 times to deal with a negative reaction to mushrooms in 2004-2006. Of those, 134 were foreigners, with Britons forming the largest group. If the government does ban mushrooms, it will be in keeping with conservative trends that have been sweeping the country in recent years.
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