Willie Nelson Cited for Drug Possession

That was twenty years ago and I gag thinking about it.
Lol...I'll bet. When I was a youngster people would dry them and smoke 'em in cob pipes.
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The ones we picked were a type of Psilocybe Cubensis, one of the many "magic" varieties. It was easy to spot them once someone showed you what they looked like. They looked different than the other mushrooms, had black/purple gills and they would quickly bruise purple when you pinched one or broke a stem. They weren't super strong compared to the freeze dried mushrooms you could buy but the dark tea made with a lot of them was really powerful. I never liked the taste or texture of any kind of mushrooms though, and even if you didn't mind the taste of the "magic" varieties a mushroom trip isn't something most people want to experience many times. It was fun I guess but not something you'd want to do over and over again.

As for them being harmless, I don't know about that. I sure wouldn't take them again. They aren't addictive though and I don't think they are much of a threat to society. I still wouldn't want them being legally sold though, although I don't know why possession or sales should be a felony in most states. You can get life in prison in my state for selling or trading any amount of these mushrooms and simple possession of even a tiny amount could land you in prison for up to ten years. Seems like major overkill to me, but I don't write the laws. If I did possession would be a minor misdemeanor involving just a fine and first offense sales of a small amount to an adult at least would probably also be a misdemeanor, but maybe with a short mandatory period of jail time. We don't have enough short mandatory jail terms on misdemeanors. Instead we just crank things up to the felony level and then most people end up pleading to suspended sentences but are stuck with felony records that make it hard for them to make an honest living and get ahead in legitimate society. And of course some get sent to prison for a long time for the same things for which others get probation or suspended sentences. We'd do better with far fewer felony level crimes but real punishments on misdemeanors. Even a ten or fifteen day jail sentence would be a lot more immediate punishment than a suspended sentence on a felony and it would probably act as just as much or more of a deterrent if it was a mandatory sentence no one could weasel out of if convicted. We've gone crazy with our drug laws in this country.

Yuck.

"Anyway, because of all this interest, there are now mail-order growing and indoor cultivation kits available, so no messy cow-tipping to get at them."

There is nothing new about that. They've been advertising spores and magic mushroom growing kits out of publications like High Times for more than twenty years. Openly advertised mail order sales of these kits and spores were going on long before the mail order marijuana seed business took off.

Yuck.
Smoked a pipefull once when I was sixteen...then spent a couple of hours talking to a cow. Never had the urge to try them again.

We've gone crazy with our drug laws in this country
We sure have!
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Well, stupid me. There's no way in the world I would know that. The webpages that I read acted like it was something new. High Times is not on my reading list and I haven't seen a magic mushroom in at least 30 years.

I didn't mean to imply that you are stupid. I just didn't want people to get the impression that there was some new magic mushroom epidemic spurning a new illegal cultivation industry. There is nothing in the government drug surveys to indicate any rise in the use of magic mushrooms in recent years. In fact, hallucinogen use overall is reportedly very low, a good bit lower than it was several years ago. Ecstasy is by far the most widely used of the hallucinogens and less than 1% of those in the major drug taking ages of 18 through 25 report having used that drug in past month. By the way, I haven't seen a High Times magazine in years either but I do remember seeing those mushroom kit ads in High Times magazines when I was a teenager in the early eighties. They've been around for a long time. The Internet no doubt makes these products more readily accessible to the masses, but it's been that way for years and there's still no upsurge in magic mushroom use.

I agree with most of your general assesment. I think marijuana and probably magic mushrooms should be regarded similarly to distillers of alcohol: they are in some small ways detrimental to society (alcohol moreso than pot or shrooms, one could argue!) however this is a free society and there is a market for it, which needs to be recognized and regulated. Right now we're looking at a free-for-all. With all of the microdistilleries popping up all over the country, I could see a very prosperous economy of micro-growers of high potency, high quality marijuana and magic musrhooms regulated by the feds being a legitimate business. Like alcohol, these companies would not be allowed to advertise on TV or to promote sports events, etc. No matter how you look at it, growing, posessing, ingesting, buying and selling marijuana and magic mushrooms are not CRIMINAL acts, no matter how illegal they may be. I haven't eaten mushrooms in quite a long time, but they're not "dangerous" they're just... weird.

I don't know. I can't find statistics specifically on magic mushroom use, but they are covered under the broader umbrella of "hallucinogens" on our main annual national drug use survey, the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) conducted by SAMHSA. These numbers are probably a little low because people don't necessarily want to admit felonious conduct to federal workers who come to their homes, but even two or three or four times as many use hallucinogens as would admit it on the NSDUH, still very few use hallucinogens. Only about .4% of Americans twelve and older reported that they had used hallucinogens in the month preceding the last survey. Ecstasy was the primary hallucinogen used, but only .2% of Americans that month had used it though. The number reporting use of LSD was so low that they listed the percentage having used it as .0%. In my personal experience in the past LSD was more prevalent at least around where I live than mushrooms on the black market. And while we don't get a lot of people charged with possessing or dealing LSD, we see far even fewer magic mushroom cases in the court system where I work as a public defender. We get more Ecstasy cases than all other hallucinogens combined by a wide margin. My guess is that mushrooms are even less prevalent in our society than LSD is, and LSD isn't that prevalent.

If so few use the drug, what advantage is there in making a legal market for it? In my experience fooling around with drugs some as a much younger man, mushrooms were one of those things that just came around town every once in a while. It wasn't like pot where you could find it any time you wanted it from a wide variety of sources (pot should be legal and regulated similar to the way we regulate alcohol). Now, if shrooms were legal and available at some shop or shops in town, people could get them whenever they wanted them. People who would never even come across magic mushrooms in their entire lives would be able to just go pick some up if they get a wild hair and decide to do something off the wall. I think a lot more people would try them and I don't see how that could be a good thing for my community. You say they are harmless. I don't know about that. I wouldn't bet on it. If anything psilocyben is a powerful drug that might not be so good for someone not mentally stable. I personally would just rather not have a big increase in the number of people tripping on shrooms in my community, and given that so few do it now it wouldn't take that many more doing it for use shoot right on up to several times the current use numbers. I just don't see an advantage in that at all.

Now, like I said I don't see any reason for one to get a felony conviction just for possessing a small amount of mushrooms. Frankly I don't think people should get a felony or go to prison for selling a few doses of shrooms to another adult. I would think a misdemeanor with a short mandatory jail sentence for a first offense would be enough of a deterrent, maybe a felony for a second offense. The fact is though that not a whole lot of people get arrested for shrooms. I've handled at least hundreds of drug cases as a criminal defense attorney over the years and I could probably count all the cases involving shrooms on one hand. If I recall correctly just about everyone I represented in shroom cases were college students or of the same age as college students. Should they get a felony for messing with shrooms? Heck no. Should we sell shrooms at a local store so a lot more people will mess with them? Again, heck no. I think that would most likely end up causing a lot more problems than it solved.

This is news?

Next thing you know, they'll report, "President of Iran thought to be an anti-semite" or "Exxon-Mobile found drilling for oil wells."