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Magic Mushrooms Banned in the NL
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| Fast Turtle |
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AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) - The Netherlands will ban the sale of hallucinogenic mushrooms, the government announced Friday, rolling back one element of the country's permissive drug policy after a teenager on a school visit jumped to her death after taking the narcotic.
The decision will go into effect within several months, said Wim van der Weegen, a Justice Ministry spokesman.
"The problem with mushrooms is that their effect is unpredictable," he said, and shops caught selling them will be closed.
Marijuana and hashish are technically illegal in the Netherlands, but police do not bother to prosecute people for possession of small amounts, and it is sold openly in designated cafes.
Possession of "hard" drugs like cocaine, LSD and Ecstasy is illegal. Mushrooms will fall somewhere in the middle.
"We're not talking about a non-prosecution policy, but we'll be targeting sellers" Van der Weegen said.
Psilocybin, the main active chemical in the mushrooms, has been illegal under international law since 1971. However, fresh, unprocessed mushrooms continued to be sold legally in the Netherlands along with herbal medicines in so-called "smart-shops," on the theory that it was impossible to determine how much of the naturally occurring substance any given mushroom contains.
Van der Weegen said that was also the reason the system proved unworkable: "It's impossible to estimate what amount will have what effect."
Calls for a re-evaluation arose after Gaelle Caroff, a 17-year-old visiting from France, from a building in Amsterdam in March after eating psychedelic mushrooms.
Caroff's parents blamed their daughter's death on hallucinations brought on by the mushrooms, though the teenager had suffered from psychiatric problems in the past. Photographs of her youthful face were splashed across newspapers around the country.
Since Caroff's death other dramatic stories involving mushrooms have been reported in the Dutch press:
- A British tourist, 22, ran amok in a hotel, breaking his window and slicing his hand badly.
- An Icelandic tourist, 19, thought he was being chased and jumped from a balcony, breaking both his legs.
- A Danish tourist, 29, drove his car wildly through a campground, narrowly missing people sleeping in their tents.
"It's a shame, the media really blew this up into a big issue," said Chloe Collette, owner of the FullMoon smart-shop in Amsterdam.
She said all the incidents had involved the use of multiple drugs - against the advice of sellers - but it was the mushrooms that were blamed.
"Used in the right way, there's no problem with mushrooms: The biggest problem is with alcohol, in my opinion."
Most mushrooms sold in Amsterdam are sold to tourists, and the city's liberal drug policies and legalized prostitution are major tourist attractions.
In May, the country's health minister, Ab Klink, undertook a study of the problems and called for suggestions from the industry and Amsterdam's city government.
Murat Kucuksen, whose farm Procare supplies about half the psychedelic mushrooms on the Dutch market, said he stood to lose several million euros invested in setting up his legal growing facilities.
He predicted the trade will move underground, prices will rise, and dealers will sell dried mushrooms or LSD as a substitute, with no guidance for tourists.
"So you'll have a rise in incidents but they won't be recorded as mushroom-related, and the politicians can declare victory," he said.
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http://www.klewtv.com/news/national/10502382.html
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| ikhouvanu |
| That won't stop people from taking them though. |
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| chucho |
why they do this lately? first they closed like half of the RLD...and now mushrooms
catholic goverment? |
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| nchs09 |
honestly taking shrooms in ams is kinda dangerous :p
the ing tram flying by you, so many cars as well. plus all the bridges. def not a good place to do drugs :p
nice that they are keeping pot legal though. |
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| chucho |
^^
i kinda agree...last time i went there and did shrooms...train almost ran over me...wasn't so high to stay there and let the train run over me like some "run-to-the-light allucination"...i just totally forgot there was a railway right in front of the shop |
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| L.E.N. |
| That sucks...they arent that bad. |
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| infinity HiGH |
| knee jerk reaction :rolleyes: |
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| eROs.au |
| Hmm, such a harmless substance villainized. |
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| RJT |
| quote: | Originally posted by infinity HiGH
knee jerk reaction :rolleyes: |
Nail on the head. Situations like this are already easily accounted for: it's called "natural selection."
Obviously this young lady simply wasn't "fit" enough - oh well, tough .
All this ban will be is a monument to one fools idiocy. |
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| RJT |
| quote: | Originally posted by josh4
Come to think of it, this doesn't mean much. If you've ever been to Amsterdam, there are pleny of illegal drugs openly sold on the streets. You can walk down a crowded street in the red light district and hear guys wisper to you about selling pills in the shows on the sidewalk. |
Yes, and if you follow half of them you'll either end up robbed, stabbed, or both.
s sake, do you really think that every who offered you coke or smack in Amsterdam was really just trying to get you high?
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| eRRaTiK |
| quote: | Originally posted by RJT
Yes, and if you follow half of them you'll either end up robbed, stabbed, or both.
s sake, do you really think that every who offered you coke or smack in Amsterdam was really just trying to get you high?
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ooooohhh so THAT was what they were doing! Those guys were annoying as hell! |
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| Akridrot |
I'm completely for legalization, and my stance is all about allowing people to put whatever they want to in their bodies. But I can't lie, the incident in the article about the guy driving through the camp kind of disturbed me.
How do the rest of you guys feel about that one? I know it's easier to just say that it isn't a common occurrence in the world. It's quite clear that it would happen regardless of if mushrooms were banned or not as well. But how would you reduce the chances of something like that happening if drugs were legalized? |
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