Magic Mushroom Ban a fact in UK!

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Magic mushroom case judge tells prosecutor: chill out

Mark Honigsbaum
Wednesday December 15, 2004
The Guardian

The law on the distribution and sale of magic mushrooms was thrown into disarray yesterday after a court decision to stay the prosecution of two men accused of illegally selling the hallucinogenic fungi at a record shop in Gloucester.

Arguing that Home Office advice to importers and distributors was "fudged", the crown court recorder Claire Miskin told Dennis Mardle and Colin Evans that the law was so ambiguous that to put them on trial amounted to an "abuse of process". She recommended that parliament consider new legislation to clarify the legal position.


It is the first time the issue of magic mushrooms has reached the crown court, though potential court actions are pending in Birmingham and Canterbury.

Mr Mardle, 52, and Mr Evans, 57, both from Gloucester, began selling magic mushrooms after reading an article in the Guardian last November which cited Home Office advice that while psilocin and psilocybin, the psychoactive constituents of the mushrooms, were illegal, it was "not illegal to sell or give away a freshly picked mushroom".

But earlier this year the Home Office wrote to mushroom importers saying that hallucinogenic mushrooms might constitute a "product" under the Misuse of Drugs Act if they had been "cultivated, transported to the marketplace, packaged, weighed and labelled".

Although the courts had previously ruled that it was legal to possess magic mushrooms except where they had been "altered by the hand of man", the Home Office also advised that merely chilling the mushrooms might constitute alteration.

It was on this basis that Gloucester police raided Mr Mardle's and Mr Evans's shop, Collectors Choice, in March, seizing four bags of mushrooms and one punnet from a fridge and six further punnets stored in a cool bag behind the counter.

The local prosecutor, Phillip Warren, told the court that while the law prohibited the freezing of the mushrooms, the legality of cooling or storing them in a fridge had never been tested and the case should go to trial in order to clarify the situation.

However, after hearing from experts that chilling did not alter the chemical makeup of the mushrooms, Ms Miskin ruled that to bring the case to trial would be a breach of the men's rights.


The case turned on the ambiguity of a Home Office advice letter
Two men accused of selling chilled magic mushrooms from their shop have been told the current law is too "fudged" to put them on trial.

Colin Evans, 57, of Kingston Road, Slimbridge, and Dennis Mardle, 52, of Southgate Street, Gloucester, were arrested in March.

Recorder Claire Miskin said: "I take the view that the Home Office circular is fudged."
She said to put them on trial amounted to a breach of their human rights.

The two men were arrested on suspicion of possessing Class A drugs with intent to supply from Collector's Choice record shop in Southgate Street in Gloucester.

Selling fresh hallucinogenic mushrooms is not illegal. They can be sold in an 'as-picked state'.

Chemical make-up

Prosecuting, Phillip Warren told Recorder Miskin that it was because the defendants were found with mushrooms chilling in a fridge that they were facing trial for selling 'prepared' - and therefore illegal - mushrooms.

This is a case where Parliament has left a gap and that gap ought really to be filled by Parliament and not by the decision of the courts Recorder Claire Miskin

The legality of cooling, or storing the fungi in a fridge has not been tested.
A Home Office circular tells potential vendors: "In the light of earlier cases it would be for the courts to determine whether chilling mushrooms in a fridge would constitute altering them in any way."

Susan Evans, defending, said the case turned on the ambiguity of the Home Office letter, adding that experts agree chilling the mushrooms "in no way altered the chemical make-up of the mushrooms".

Recorder Miskin said: "I decide that this is a case where Parliament has left a gap and it seems to me that that gap ought really to be filled by Parliament and not by the decision of the courts."