Court to fix hearing date to rule on legality of 'magic' mushrooms

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O'Loughlin
WHEN does a magic mushroom lose its magic and become unlawful?
That is to be thrashed out next month when a Cork shopkeeper who says she is legally selling magic mushrooms brings her case to court.
A High Court judge yesterday refused to grant Helen Stone who owns the "Funky Skunk" in Cork city an injunction stopping Customs and Excise seizing consignments of her magic mushrooms imported from Holland.
Two shipments of the unprocessed mushrooms for the Funky Skunk have already been stopped by customs so far this year.
Ms Justice Mary Laffoy refused to grant the injunction but said an early date will be given to the full hearing of the case.
Counsel for the Customs and Excise Justin Dillon said the Customs case will be that magic mushrooms are unlawful. He said he will be saying that the mushrooms contain a prohibited substance which means the mushroom itself is a prohibited substance.
The issue, the court heard, is whether something in a natural state containing a controlled substance is a controlled substance itself.
Helen Stone, who owns the Funky Skunk clothing and organic products store at Hanover Place in Cork, has complained that the seizures are having a bad effect on her business.
Ms Stone said the mushrooms are imported from Holland fresh and unprocessed and arrive at her store in that state and were sold that way. A letter of September 15, 2004 received from the Department of Justice in response to inquiries from her business colleague had stated that psycho-active magic mushrooms of the same legal status as in the UK, while containing illegal chemicals, were not illegal to possess or to sell in their unprocessed state, she said.
It also stated that anyone found in possession of treated psychoactive mushrooms, such as a dried or cooked form, would be guilty of an offence. She was therefore advised that the importation and sale of unprocessed psychoactive mushrooms was not illegal. She had been selling them from June 2005. In a replying affidavit, Customs and Excise officer Patrick O'Sullivan said he did not accept the contents of the letter written to Ms Stone by the Department.