bad press for shrooms

[mook]

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - 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.
Regulation of mushrooms is even less stringent than Holland's famously loose laws on marijuana, which is illegal but tolerated in "coffee shops"
that are a major tourist attraction.
Gaelle Caroff's parents blamed their daughter's death in March on hallucinations brought on by the mushrooms, although the teenager had suffered from
psychiatric problems in the past. Photographs of her beautiful, youthful face have been splashed across newspapers around the country.
In May, Health Minister Ab Klink ordered the national health institute to perform a new study on the risks of mushrooms. Depending on the conclusions,
which are due next month, he said he would either recommend that mushroom sales be limited to those over 18 or impose a total ban.
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 in an interview last week that the
mushrooms themselves are not a health threat because they are neither addictive nor toxic.
However, people who take them may hurt themselves or others, he said. The risks grow if mushrooms are combined with alcohol or cannabis, or if people
already have psychiatric problems.
"They really shouldn't use mushrooms because that can trigger psychosis," he said.
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.
Dutch government data suggest most mushrooms sold in smartshops are eaten by tourists. Since Caroff's death, other dramatic stories involving foreigners
have been reported in the Dutch press:
• A 22-year-old British tourist ran amok in a hotel, breaking his window and slicing his hand.
• A 19-year-old Icelandic tourist thought he was being chased and jumped from a balcony, breaking both his legs.
• A 29-year-old Danish tourist drove his car wildly through a campground, narrowly missing people sleeping in their tents.
A majority of parties in parliament ranging from centrist to far right have demanded the hallucinogenic mushrooms be outlawed.
If the government does ban mushrooms, it will be in keeping with conservative trends that have been sweeping the country in recent years. Since 2001,
Muslim immigrants have been under pressure to learn Dutch and integrate, and there have been calls by some to ban Islamic schools and radical mosques.
Last month, authorities announced a major crackdown on organized crime in Amsterdam's Red Light District. And the country's marijuana policies have also
been under pressure, with authorities launching more aggressive prosecution of growers.
Brothers Murat and Ali Kucuksen, whose farm "Procare" supplies about half the psychedelic mushrooms on the Dutch market, say they are afraid their business
will now be forced to close.
Their state-of-the-art system to grow and package fresh mushrooms is already operating at half capacity, in part because of the British ban and in part
because of the recent bad press.
"The reputation of the product is down the drain," Ali Kucuksen said.
For many, however, it is still business as usual at Amsterdam's smartshops.
Chloe Collette, the owner of the Full Moon shop in Amsterdam, showed a group of British backpackers the various types of psychedelic mushrooms on sale
Thursday.
"We have seven kinds on the menu, most of them are the softer kind," she told the group.
She said she doesn't sell to people under 18 and tries to screen out customers who appear unstable. But she acknowledged there is no way to be sure.
She said she recommends people find a park or someplace outside where they can sit and talk with friends when they take them.
"People need to feel comfortable when they take it," she said. "It's something natural that makes you connected to yourself


This is sad but im sure there was some major stupidity involved here.

[Hippie3]

it's 'stupid' to sell/give magic mushrooms
to someone you don't know
then send them off on their merry way
with no guidance, no sitter.

the 'smart' thing do do would be to
close the so-called smartshops
that have turned the counterculture
into a for-profit business concern.
that would end drug tourism
as well as over 90% of the trouble.

[roc]

It's my understanding that they will no longer be sold to young under age tourist types but otherwise things will remain the same.

The educated locals will not allow some stupid tourist to change their freedom of choice.

I love Amsterdam but I also know what the hell I am doing with my choices... Amsterdam will only make changes that protect IDIOTS from themselves.

[TVCasualty]

I agree with Hip about the stupidity of that practice, and it's the same negligent crap that's going to get Salvia listed here in the U.S., though I think it doesn't matter what really goes on (if the stories are real or exaggerated or total fakes); when stories like this start coming out in clusters, it means someone is on the war path for political points again.

But with regulation, who decides who's ready to buy mushrooms? Could we get a license after taking a written test? We all know how ridiculous that angle is, but slinging them freely doesn't work either, so the only compromise in sight is restricting the sale to adults. The kids who can handle it are clever enough to get them on their own, as many of us can attest, and if an adult is reckless with mushrooms then at least there's no one else to blame.

However,

In the same time period as these 'dramatic' stories were published, how many incidents of equal or greater severity occurred that were caused by alcohol?

And obviously it was the mushrooms; "psychiatric issues" had nothing to do with it. That's why there's all these tens of thousands of people eating mushrooms and jumping off high places every month, I guess. The fact that patients suffering "psychiatric symptoms" often need to be restrained to prevent them from injuring themselves or others is irrelevant here of course.

[bugs]

And, of course, no one ever does anything stupid on alcohol! or on a dare.

Roc, I hope you're right, and they just restrict sales to adults. That's perfectly reasonable. The Netherlands seems to have a pretty rational gummint, so...

[aumbrellaforainydays]

The sales should be limited by sifting through customers on a person to person basis. sure i have no problem giving a friend a trip and see him through, unfortunately though, these "coffeeshops" aren't concerned about the possible negative effects if they will sell to any underage tourists who may have a risk of psychosis.

I've always been fascinated by watching how something illegal in most of the world, allbeit natural, is inputed into the economic system and turns a profit. In other words, seeing an "old world" considered sacrament being turned into a "new world" recreational drug. but for something so powerful of a consciousness changer, we should take note of the warnings the shamans before us have given us about anything of such potency. its not surprising that people are experiencing bad trips, or ending up crazy or dead, because, if they are looking for a drug thats like getting drunk, mushrooms ain't the drug, especially in such a place like amsterdam. so they go off tripping, with 35 grams of fresh shrooms, with no direction, advice, or sitter and end up goners. at some point the fellow man has a choice, for concern for a fellow man's safety and should practice caution selling illegal drugs to the irresponisble or inexperienced. however, i also see that sometimes, if someone wants what they want, and they wont refuse, its sometimes better to just give it to them than deny them their liberty of life... or death, in some cases. besides i've also played with the idea that if the world were to end and i knew it were to be so (like a meteor or asteroid hitting earth) what drug(s) should i ingest just before the time comes?

[Cafro]

This is a perfect example of bolognia. Its the drugs fault and noone can kill themselves!

I love it, the more uncertain people that get together and talk about something the stupider the outcome.

So they decide that when somone eats a mushroom they become a mushroom. So the only way to solve the problem is to eliminate the mushroom. FALSE

[Dipole]

TV your point of comparing the affects and side affects of a substance to parallel affects by alcohol is a good way to keep debate on a reasonable footing. New findings are always being distorted by the misunderstanding of statistical information. Recently a study suggested that pot smoking increased a person's likelihood to have psychotic troubles by 40%. What is not being said is that means your odds go up to 1.4 chances out of a couple 100,000. That is practically insignificant. However no equivalent statistic is sighted for what alcohol does. So the real danger is not told, only the hope that this scare will play up some agenda.

[TVCasualty]

Yep, figures don't lie, but liars figure...