Psychedelic Mushrooms Found By Firefighters. OAKLAND (AP). Firefighters battling an apartment house blaze stumbled onto a psychedelic mushrooms factory jammed with about 2,000 jars of spore cultures, police said yesterday.

"The whole apartment was turned into a mushroom growing factory. There was no room to sit or sleep in the place," said Oakland vice officer Chuck Holland.

He estimated that the 8 to 10 pounds of dehydrated mushrooms were worth aabout $100 an ounce. But he said Oakland police haven't had much experienc dealing with the "magic mushrooms."

(10) SIXTIES DRUG IS IN AGAIN   

Crime: ‘Magic Mushrooms’ have made a comeback and police say they can be addictive or even deadly.

Ben Thomas put hallucinogenic mushrooms on his pepperoni pizza.  He mixed them into Lipton tea, or ate the nasty-tasting drugs with loads of potato chips.

Source: Orange County Register.

Contact: letters@link.freedom.com.

Website: http://www.ocregister.com.

Copyright: 1999. The Orange County Register.

Pubdate: Thursday, January 7, 1999.

Author: Mai Tran – OCR

URL: http://www,mapinc.org/drugnews/v99.n046.a01.html.

SIXTIES DRUG IS IN AGAIN

Crime: 'Magic Mushrooms' have made a comeback,and police say they can be
addictive or even deadly.

Ben Thomas put hallucinogenic mushrooms on his pepperoni pizza. He mixed
them into Lipton tea, or ate the nasty-tasting drugs with loads of potato
chips.

"All I wanted to do was get high," said Thomas, 19, of Newport Beach, who
says he has been straight for almost a year. "All my friends were into it."

Like bell-bottoms and platform shoes, psilocybin mushrooms are making a
comeback with teens and young adults.

The so-called "magic mushrooms," popular in the 1960s and 1970s, these days
are a drug of choice at rave parties - all-night gatherings held secretly in
warehouses and other industrial sites, police say.

The strongest of hallucinogenic mushrooms, psilocybins have made their
biggest resurgence in the past two years, said Walter Allen, special agent
in charge of the Orange regional office of the state Bureau of Narcotic
Enforcement.

"A lot of these young kids are getting into it," Allen said. "But they don't
know what they're getting into. It's unfortunate."

In what is believed to be the department's largest mushroom bust in at least
12 years, Orange County sheriff's narcotics investigators in December seized
20 pounds of psilocybin mushrooms - with a street value of $80,000 to
$100,000, sheriff's Lt. Hector Rivera said.

Three people, from Fullerton and Mission Viejo, were arrested for allegedly
storing and selling the mushrooms.

The mushrooms have a street value of $40 for one-eight of an ounce, police
said, though the price fluctuates with supply and demand. The drugs are
chewed, sucked or placed in drinks. The "trip" lasts two to six hours.

Mushrooms, which are physically addictive, can cause nausea, vomiting and
distort comprehension of time and space. Use can lead to severe liver
dysfunction and failure, Allen said.

Moods, good or bad, are intensified. Experts say the trip depends on the
drug taker's mindset.

Sometimes, death can result.

"People try to do some impossible feats under the influence of the drugs,"
Rivera said. "Some try to jump off a building or stand in front of a car."

The mushrooms often come from the Pacific Northwest, though sometimes they
sprout up closer to home.

"Some hydroponic gardens are set up in garages or bedrooms," Anaheim police
Sgt. Joe Vargas said, referring to plants grown in nutrient solutions. "They
can easily be home-grown."

Police usually seize the drugs in small quantities during larger marijuana
and cocaine busts, Rivera said.

La Habra police stumbled onto the largest batch of cultivated psilocybin
mushrooms in the county last year when officers responded to a disturbance
call at an apartment complex.

Police seized 176 pounds of mushrooms - valued at more than $1 million -
being grown throughout the apartment, said La Habra police Sgt. Phil
Stufflebean, supervisor of the special enforcement unit.

A college student who learned how to grow mushrooms on the Internet was
arrested and has pleaded guilty to possession and cultivation, Stufflebean
said.

Mushroom users say the drug is preferable to LSD because it is cheaper and
easier to get, and the high isn't as intense or as long-lasting. And the
mushrooms don't show up during standard drug screening.

Thomas, who began taking the drug at 14, said he ate mushrooms nearly a
dozen times every month for three years.

He sold his compact discs or stole, even from his parents, to get $10 for a
quick high, he said.

"They're not that cool," he said.

Kelly Wilson, a drug recovery specialist, recalled taking mushrooms at a
party, after which, she said, the walls began to move in and out. She saw
the carpet lift from the floor. She watched as music come out of the
speakers.

"I felt connected to people, a lot of love for everybody," recalled Wilson,
35, who did drugs for six years until she stopped in the late '80s. "It was
a fun party thing to do."

But she and other former users also know the downside.

Once while high on mushrooms, Thomas fell and broke four front teeth and cut
his lips.

Thomas said getting drug counseling at the Hope Institute in Costa Mesa has
changed his life.

"I feel better about myself," said Thomas, who now attends Orange Coast
College and works at a coffee bar to pay for his new car and apartment. "I
got to buy my family presents for the first time ever this Christmas. The
only way for me is total abstinence."


fucking ridiculous - "He sold his compact discs or stole, even from his parents, to get $10 for a
quick high, he said." sounds like more serious drugs were to blame here, not mushrooms

http://www.drugsense.org/dsw/1999/ds99.n82.html#art10

Telegraph.co.uk.

5-3-2003.

TV writer held over 'magic mushroom'

By Hugh Davies, Entertainment Correspondent
Last Updated: 12:12pm GMT 05/03/2003.

AARON SORKIN, creator of the Channel 4 series, The West Wing, has been arrested at a Los Angeles airport for allegedly trying to take hallucinogenic "magic" mushrooms on to a plane bound for Las Vegas.

Sorkin, 39, writes most of the episodes of The West Wing, a drama about White House intrigues. The hard-working perfectionist had just finished the last of this season's 22 shows, which are being filmed this week for NBC. The producer used his own experiences with drug addiction to shape the White House chief-of-staff character, Leo McGarry, as a recovering alcoholic.

March 1, 2007 - Daily Nexus

Hippie Hill Is a Haven
S.F. Park Is a Secular Progressive Experiment

By C.K. Hickey / Columnist

Published Thursday, March 1, 2007

Issue 85 / Volume 87

Buying drugs is a chore, a proverbial thorn in one’s backside. Can you find a seller? Will they have anything the next time you come calling? Nobody likes this part.

So picture a place instead where you’re offered the kindest of bud, chocolate-covered mushrooms, and crystal meth the moment you arrive. People all around you are lighting up fatty jays and beating drums and wandering around with a dazed look on their faces that would land them a night in the Santa Barbara County Jail.

Is this some dark, urban dungeon on skid row? Nope, it’s in a beautiful public city park swarming with tourists. What else could it be but San Francisco’s fabled Hippie Hill?

In Bill O’Reilly’s latest book, Culture Warrior, he argues that our country is currently engaged in an ideological war between those standing for traditional moral values and “secular progressives” wishing to model the country after Western Europe. If such a war exists, then San Francisco must be the Manhattan Project of secular progressivism. Traditionalists look with scorn at what they call “San Francisco Values,” but I prefer to think of the city as Diet Amsterdam - an opportunity to see how well leftist policies work in the land of the free and home of the brave.

Enter Hippie Hill, perhaps the ultimate secular progressive experiment. Yes, Mendocino and Humboldt are swarming with drug abusers, but that’s different - nobody lives there. Over 700,000 people live in San Francisco.

There are a couple of reasons why a city of this size gets away with it. Many of the people sparking in the park are card-carrying medicinal users, so they have the state law on their side. Also, as of last year, adult marijuana offenses in San Francisco are the lowest priority for law enforcement. This ordinance was passed 8-3 by the Board of Supervisors, an overwhelming majority. So yeah, it can be pretty damn easy to score some ganj. The last time I visited Golden Gate Park, a grimy looking woman dressed like the “feed the birds” lady from “Mary Poppins” walked up to me and asked, “You wanna smoke some herb?” like it ain’t no thang. I hadn’t even made it to Hippie Hill yet.

Proponents of Hippie Hill will argue that the people mean no harm, and wish only to play their bongos, burn some fern and perhaps share some of the wealth with others. Because it’s, like, all about peace, love and understanding, man. Far out. What if it were this easy to buy pot at my high school? The mind wanders.

It’s tough to determine from Hippie Hill whether it is indeed possible to have an area that openly embraces drug use without compromising the safety of youngsters and tourists. Children? Forget about it. A better name for this place would be Hobo Hill. And while these guys may generally be pretty laid back in comparison to other parts of the city, you still occasionally run into the mentally unstable intransient under the spell of drugs far more powerful than ‘shrooms and sticky.

That won’t stop the older tourists, though, because the entire surrounding Haight-Asbury district these days is a sanitized commercial enterprise with a Gap outlet and a Ben and Jerry’s. A friend of mine at UC Santa Cruz, who uses Hippie Hill as his one-stop cannabis supershop, complains that the pot is overpriced and of generally inferior quality to the stuff grown here in the Santa Ynez Mountains. I’ve seen this mentioned in the pages of this paper before, so maybe it’s true. Hippie Hill a tourist trap? Gasp! Sob!

So what’s the verdict? Would an open drug bazaar like this hippiest of hills work in the land east of the 580 freeway? Or will we never be able to tell because the data is masked by some of San Francisco’s infamous quirks? You know, the ones Bill O’Reilly blames on the city’s “secular progressivism,” like the number of homeless people and rampant number of … er … friends of Dorothy. But I’ll leave whether that’s true or not for another column. In the meantime, go ahead and visit if you want, but for God’s sake, be careful about sitting on the grass - wouldn’t forty-some years of hippies make you at least consider a beach blanket?

UC Briefs

News from campuses throughout the UC system

Published Monday, March 5, 2007

Issue 87 / Volume 87

UCPD Says Hallucinogenic Mushrooms May Have Had Role in Freshman’s Fall From Window

UC Berkeley Daily Californian: March 2, 2007 - Police are currently investigating whether controlled substances contributed to an incident Wednesday night when a student fell from a third-story residential hall room.

UCPD Assistant Chief Mitch Celaya said four students were examined by Berkeley Fire Dept. officials, who suspected the students may have ingested psilocybin - a hallucinogen found in some mushrooms.

Witnesses said they found freshman Jesus Aguilar was naked and covered in blood after his fall shortly before 8:30 p.m. Wednesday. Several other students covered him with clothing and a sleeping bag while awaiting paramedics. Celaya said the student was transported to Highland Hospital in Oakland, and that the facial and head injuries he sustained are not life-threatening.

According to Celaya, three other students were also examined by Berkeley fire officials and are also suspected to have ingested mushrooms. Two were transported to Alta Bates Hospital for treatment while the other student sought medical care independently.

Police are not releasing the students’ names because of the ongoing investigation. Celaya said he did not know whether any of the students were still hospitalized.

Police suspect that Aguilar was alone in the room at the time of the incident, Celaya said.

Man had half-pound of 'shrooms, cops say

Concord suspect, 40, faces seven felony drug charges; cops had been looking for marijuana

By Malaika Fraley, MEDIANEWS STAFF
Article Last Updated: 06/13/2007 05:21:39 PM PDT

CONCORD — In the world of narcotics enforcement, seizing cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana is a daily chore. But it's rare for authorities to come across psilocybin mushrooms — the so-called 'shrooms of the psychedelic'60s — as Concord detectives did recently.

Sidney Wayne Bishop, 40, was loudly strumming his electric guitar in his Colfax Street home on April 21 when he was surprised by a search warrant from officers looking for marijuana.

In addition to 86 marijuana plants, Lt. Keith Whitaker said Bishop was growing psilocybin mushrooms in short Mason jars stacked like strawberry preserves in a dark, temperature-controlled room.

Officers seized 46 jars containing psilocybin mushrooms weighing, in total, two pounds wet and a half-pound dry, Whitaker said. Over 300 more jars seized were either empty or contained mushroom spores in early stages of cultivation.

One-eighth of an ounce of psilocybin mushrooms, enough for multiple users, has a street value of about $40, according to online sites.

"It's not shocking to occasionally come across psilocybin mushrooms, people possessing them in small quantities for use," Whitaker said. "I can't remember if we've ever come across mushrooms for cultivation. It was unusual, and we stumbled across it."

It was so atypical in Contra Costa County, drug crimes prosecutor Dana Filkowski said she had to manually enter the charge for psilocybin mushroom cultivation, which indicates no such cases in years.

"It's not like medical marijuana, where it's found a place in mainstream society," Filkowski said. "I think it's still associated with a counterculture, or alternative lifestyle."

Bishop faces seven felony drug charges of cultivation and possession for sale that, if convicted, could result in more than six years in prison, Filkowski said.

An articulate new grandfather with multiple facial piercings and an abundance of colorful body art, Bishop pleaded not guilty before a Contra Costa judge on Monday dressed in a tan suit. His hair, which falls below his shoulders, was pulled back in a low ponytail.

Outside the Martinez courthouse, Bishop, who is being represented by a public defender, declined to comment on the charges against him in light of the early stages of the case. He said he's back at home, where neighbors who heard of his legal troubles gave him $200 cash to support him after he was freed from county jail in lieu of $95,000 bail last month after serving several days.

Bishop said he served 66 months in a federal prison after he was convicted in his native Iowa in 1988 for distributing LSD. Bishop challenged federal sentencing guidelines that combines the weight of the LSD with its carrier medium (in that case, blotter paper) in the calculation of the total weight of the drug. The conviction was affirmed by an appeals court before it was denied consideration by the U.S. Supreme Court, records show.

Bishop said Justice Thurgood Marshall wrote a scathing argument of why it should be heard.

Under the federal schedule of controlled substances, psilocybin mushrooms are in the same class as marijuana, LSD and peyote. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency's San Francisco field office, which polices California from Bakersfield to Redding, sees about one to two mushroom cultivation cases a year, said Special Agent Casey McEnry. Typically, it's found in the possession of mid- to low-level poly-drug traffickers who are selling other drugs such as ecstasy and marijuana, McEnry said. It's difficult to seek out cultivators, because mushrooms can be grown so discreetly.

"It's still out there, but on a much smaller scale as it was 40 years ago," McEnry said. "But if we're still seizing them, it's still being used, and there's still a market for it in the Bay Area."

David Campbell, president of the Mycological Society of San Francisco, a nonprofit group since the 1950s that hunts and studies mushrooms for research and hobby, said the history of psilocybin mushrooms dates back thousands of years to shamans, and other religious leaders would ingest them for spiritual reasons.

Psilocybin mushrooms grow naturally all over the world. In urban areas, they are commonly found in landscaping. In nature, they grow on animal dung. While the general consensus is they are not addictive, they are illegal almost everywhere and can be dangerous to people predisposed to mental conditions, Campbell said.

He stressed that many kinds of wild mushrooms are poisonous and can result in death.

"(Psilocybin mushrooms) aren't for casual identification. If you don't know what you're eating, you should not be eating it," Campbell said. "It's like a game of Russian Roulette."