Shroom hunting When fungi pop up, so do thieves

[klaatu]

Spring rains bring unwanted visitors to a cow pasture: wild mushrooms and those who seek magic in them.

St Petersburg Times

http://www.sptimes.com/2006/06/16/Pa...p_up__so.shtml

June 16, 2006

HUDSON - The thieves come after the spring rains. They carry grocery bags or water jugs with widened spouts. They ignore the cattle. They go straight for the dung.

Mysterious prizes spring from the piles in this 75-acre pasture off Hicks Road. Some species can produce a high similar to LSD. Others can be fatal.

The prizes are known as magic mushrooms.

And Gary Joiner wishes they didn't exist.

Joiner, 65, leases this land to grow beef cattle. He says the mushroom harvesters have put him under siege. He sees all kinds: old and young, smart and dumb, pretty and ugly. But mostly they are persistent.

"They come in here every day," he said. "There is no way to stop them."

Joiner said the thieves breach his fence as many as five times a week. This allows the cattle to get out, often with disastrous consequences. He said he once had to settle for $100,000 with a man who claimed one of Joiner's cows had gored him in the groin.

Wild mushrooms have been used in religious rituals since 3,000 B.C., said James Kimbrough, a mycologist fungi expert and professor at the University of Florida. But some of them contain chemicals that can destroy red blood cells and even cause death.

The harvesters often boil the mushrooms into a sort of tea in hopes of reaching a psychedelic high, said Lt. Robert Sullivan of the Pasco County Sheriff's Office. "Then they drink this ghastly, disgusting stuff, and they sit around and they poison themselves."

It is not illegal to possess psychedelic mushrooms in Florida, Sullivan said. Users can be busted only if they're caught after they've isolated the chemicals, and that rarely happens. So law enforcement goes after them with the stiffest possible charge: trespassing.

The latest episode took place Wednesday morning. Joiner got a call that his cattle were loose. When he drove up from New Port Richey to check it out, he found a gap in the fence. And beyond an oak grove to the south, he saw three figures.

They saw Joiner and took off. Sheriff's deputies went after them. Deputies caught them about 20 minutes later in a field behind All Saints Lutheran Church on Hudson Avenue. A 17-year-old boy and a 16-year-old girl were warned and released to their parents.

John Steven Ruch, 20, went to jail on a charge of resisting an officer.

Ruch was released Wednesday on $500 bail. At his single-wide manufactured home off Terrace Drive Thursday morning, a polite young woman answered the door. She wore a blue T-shirt that said "Vote For Pedro."

She said Ruch was not available for an interview.

She said he was not feeling well.

Klaatu

Reputation Comments on this post:

cool article....reputable member...keep up the good work.

[Alfa]

I am lost here. Fresh magic mushrooms are legal in Florida, USA?

[Abrad]

According to Erowid

Florida stands out because of a decision in 1978 in Fiske v Florida by the Florida Supreme Court which ruled that wild-picked psilocybin mushrooms could not be legally considered "containers" of psilocybin and thus would have to be specifically listed in Florida law by the legislature if they meant to make them illegal. Since the Florida legislature has not chosen to change the laws since then, wild Psilocybin mushrooms are presumptively legal to possess in Florida. This does not mean police won't arrest people for possession of even wild mushrooms, but this has been used as a successful defense against such charges.

[IHrtHalucingens]

SWIM was under the impression than many places in the US allow for fresh mushrooms to be possessed, not sold though, and of course not to be intended for human consumption to get high. But he has heard of cases where this has been used as a defense, not sure the outcome though.

"...but this has been used as a successful defense against such charges."

But i guess some people have been successful.

[Alfa]

I have searched for my copy of Richard Glen Boire's book 'sacred mushrooms & the law' as it has been a while since I last read it. It is very good. But I can't remember what it said about Florida. If my memory serves me right there where some cases in Florida described.

The recent supreme court ruling on Ayahuasca should however have effect on mushroom legality.

[Spiff]

Originally Posted by Alfa

I have searched for my copy of Richard Glen Boire's book 'sacred mushrooms & the law' as it has been a while since I last read it. It is very good. But I can't remember what it said about Florida. If my memory serves me right there where some cases in Florida described.

The recent supreme court ruling on Ayahuasca should however have effect on mushroom legality.

It's a grey area, the trick is that you have to have knowingly picked them for there content and admit that you knew. If you are caught, just saying something like "They are mushrooms for my consumption, I put them in my spaghetti!" should circumnavigate a possesion charge. A trespassing charge is a whole other story!

[psychobill90]

that is sort of messed up... how hard is it to just jump or crawl threw the fence... or maybe go and ask the land owner for permission..

[Dankus]

Wow, SWIM lives in florida and did not know this. Luckily he lives right across the road from a cow pasture and has easy access to them =).

[worldwid]

Originally Posted by Alfa

I am lost here. Fresh magic mushrooms are legal in Florida, USA?

Yep =) They just hit SWIY with a tresspassing charge, that is all you did wrong according to florida state law. If SWIY were to dry them, or extract psil. then they could get SWIY with a possession charge.

[fnord]

i dont understand the difference between dry/wet in the eyes of the law,people also dry non-trippy mushrooms for storage so why would this matter?

[KBLSD]

trashbags full of mushrooms thats sounds awesome swim wishes that would happen where he lives

[worldwid]

Originally Posted by fnord

i dont understand the difference between dry/wet in the eyes of the law,people also dry non-trippy mushrooms for storage so why would this matter?

I honestly couldn't tell you, I think because fresh only stay fresh for so long, and drying them is seen as a way to package them for re-sale.

Thats the only thing I can think of.

[augentier]

Thats the only thing that makes sense to me too..

arent they legal in New Mexico too?


---edit---

not sure if this has been posted elsewhere on DF (probably has) but just for the readers of this one...

http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/29120.html

Growing hallucinogenic mushrooms not illegal, state appeals court rules (7 comments; last comment posted August 2, 2005 03:02 pm) print | email this story


By BARRY MASSEY | The Associated Press
June 16, 2005


Growing hallucinogenic mushrooms isn’t prohibited by a New Mexico law against manufacturing an illegal drug.

That’s the legal conclusion of the state Court of Appeals, which has overturned the felony drug-trafficking conviction of an Alamogordo man for growing psilocybin mushrooms in his home.

Under state law, drug trafficking includes the manufacturing of illegal drugs.

However, the court said growing mushrooms was not covered by the drugtrafficking law’s definition of “manufacture.”

The hallucinogenic substance in the mushrooms, psilocybin, is an illegal controlled substance under state and federal law. Street terms for the mushrooms include “magic mushrooms” and “shrooms,” according to a U.S. Justice Department Web site.

The court, in making its decision , cited a 1999 ruling that concluded that growing marijuana does not constitute manufacturing under New Mexico’s law against drug trafficking.

The law defines manufacture as “the production, preparation, compounding, conversion or processing of a controlled substance or controlled substance analog by extraction from substances of natural origin or independently by means of chemical synthesis or by a combination of extraction and chemical synthesis and includes any packaging or repackaging of the substance or labeling or relabeling of its container.”

Police raided David Ray Pratt’s home in Alamogordo in June 2002 based on information from a confidential informant . They found mushrooms growing in glass jars, syringes containing psilocybin spores for inoculating a mixture used to grow the mushrooms, a foam cooler with a humidifier apparatus and instructions for growing the mushrooms.

At his trial, Pratt testified he was trying to grow the mushrooms for his own use and didn’t intend to sell them. He said he was a heavy user of the mushrooms and they were expensive, worth about $15 a gram. Police found about seven grams of the mushrooms.

Pratt was convicted of drug trafficking by manufacture — a second-degree felony — and sentenced to nine years in prison. The sentence was suspended, and he was placed on five years’ probation.

He also was convicted of possession of drug paraphernalia , a misdemeanor. In the raid of Pratt’s house, police had found pipes used to smoke marijuana.

Pratt did not appeal the drugparaphernalia conviction.

The attorney general’s office argued Pratt’s felony conviction should be upheld because he used special equipment to artificially grow the mushrooms.

Pratt’s lawyer in the appeal, Cordelia Friedman, an assistant appellate public defender, contended in a brief that the mushrooms were in “a natural state of mushroomness when their ‘cob-like ’ structures were ripped out of their mason jars by police.” The illegal hallucinogenic substance is produced naturally by the mushroom during a certain stage of its development , according to the court.

“Genetic material in a seed or spore, brought to fruit by provision of soil and water, is not ‘manufacturing’ as contemplated by the Legislature” in the drug-trafficking law, Friedman wrote.

The Court of Appeals agreed.

“Because there is no evidence that defendant engaged in ‘extraction from substances of natural origin or ... chemical synthesis’ as defined by (the drug-trafficking law) ... his acts of cultivating or growing mushrooms, even if by artificial means, are not prohibited” by state law, the court said in an opinion written by Judge James Wechsler.

The court pointed out New Mexico’s anti-drug laws are patterned after a federal law. However, state law does not include a federal provision that makes clear the “planting , cultivation, growing or harvesting of a controlled substance” is illegal because those are defined as the production of a drug.

The court said “we believe the Legislature acted intentionally when it omitted a similar definition” of production in New Mexico’s law against drug trafficking.