Dutch to ban ’shrooms

And why? Dumb tourists!

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) — The Dutch government said Friday that it will ban the sale of hallucinatory mushrooms, rolling back one element of the country’s permissive drug policy after a series of high-profile negative incidents. The Dutch government has announced it is to ban the sale of hallucinogenic mushrooms. The decision will go into effect within several months and doesn’t need parliamentary approval, Justice Ministry spokesman Wim van der Weegen said.

“We intend to forbid the sale of ‘magic’ mushrooms,” he said. “That means shops caught doing so will be closed.”

Under the country’s famed tolerance policy, marijuana and hashish are technically illegal but police don’t bother to prosecute people for possession of small amounts, and they are sold openly in designated cafes.

Possession of “hard” drugs like cocaine and Ecstasy is illegal.

Psilocybin, the main active chemical in the mushrooms, has been illegal under international law since 1971.

However, mushrooms that are fresh and unprocessed in any way have continued to be sold legally in the Netherlands, on the theory that it was impossible to determine how much of the naturally occurring substance any given mushroom contains. Mushrooms will fall somewhere in the middle of the Dutch legality scale.

“We’re not talking about a non-prosecution policy, but we’ll be targeting sellers,” Van der Weegen said.

Van der Weegen said that, in the end, that was also the reason the policy proved unworkable.

“The problem with mushrooms is that their effect is unpredictable. It’s impossible to estimate what amount will have what effect.”

Calls for a re-evaluation arose after a French 17-year-old, Gaelle Caroff, jumped from a building after eating psychedelic mushrooms while on a school visit to Amsterdam. Caroff’s parents blamed her death on hallucinations brought on by the mushrooms, though the teenager had suffered from psychiatric problems in the past. Her photographs was splashed across newspapers around the country. Since Caroff’s death, other dramatic stories involving mushrooms have been reported in the Dutch press, though mushroom vendors complained that each of the cases involved tourists who were using other drugs and alcohol at the same time — against their usage instructions for mushrooms.

The users include:

• A British tourist, 22, who ran amok in a hotel, breaking his window and slicing his hand badly.

• An Icelandic tourist, 19, who thought he was being chased and jumped from a balcony, breaking both his legs.

• A Danish tourist, 29, who drove his car wildly through a campground, narrowly missing people sleeping in their tents. (Everyone knows you don’t drive on mushrooms! - Ed)

“It’s a shame, the media really blew this up into a big issue,” said Chloe Collette, owner of the FullMoon smart-shop in Amsterdam. She said all the incidents had involved the use of multiple drugs — against the advice of sellers — but it was the mushrooms that were blamed.

“Used in the right way, there’s no problem with mushrooms: The biggest problem is with alcohol, in my opinion.”

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