Pubdate: Wed, 15 Dec 2004
Source: Guardian, The (UK)
Copyright: 2004 Guardian Newspapers Limited
Contact:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardian/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/175
Author: Mark Honigsbaum
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization)

MAGIC MUSHROOM CASE JUDGE TELLS PROSECUTOR - CHILL OUT

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.
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MAP posted-by: Derek