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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.