Minister to ban magic mushroom sales
Wednesday 10 October 2007
Health minister Ab Klink is preparing to ban the sale of hallucinogenic mushrooms following a string of incidents involving foreign tourists, the AD newspaper reports on Wednesday.
Sources told the paper that a final decision will be taken this week. A majority of MPs have already called for a ban. The sale of dried mushrooms is illegal under the opium laws but fresh mushrooms are widely available at so-called smart shops.
According to Amsterdam health service figures, ambulances were called out to deal with mushroom-takers 128 times last year.
http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2 ... shroom.php
Minister to ban magic mushroom sales
-
Echotraffic
- Posts: 4
- Joined: Tue 9th Oct 2007 08:36 am
- Location: France
WHY.....this is so fucked up. I have never taken mushrooms, and I dont plan to take them, since I dont like drugs I cant control, but this really sucks, it again cuts the freedom of us all.....WTF IS GOING ON IN THIS WORLD!?!
I cant even explain my hatred in words about those things.....maybe its my youth, but I cant understand the human stupidity!
fuck the government
I cant even explain my hatred in words about those things.....maybe its my youth, but I cant understand the human stupidity!
fuck the government
This really chaps my ass. There will always be fools in the world, why punish the rest of us for their mistakes... they seem to punish themselves enough. Peh. Am planning a trip for sometime in May, and was definately planning on Hawaiians the entire time. Fuckers. 
50 characters? Nothing to say in 50 characters.
-
Echotraffic
- Posts: 4
- Joined: Tue 9th Oct 2007 08:36 am
- Location: France
Another slightly more optimistic approach. Crossing fingers. Gotta love the reference to "week-end tourists", though 
.
.Dutch Consider Magic Mushroom Ban
Wednesday, Aug. 08, 2007 By JOOST VAN EGMOND/AMSTERDAM Parliament calling for a ban on magic mushrooms in the Netherlands after a series of incidents.
Peter Dejong / AP
When Amsterdam police found a disoriented French tourist in his van last month with his slain dog beside him, he told them he had wanted to free the animal's mind. He also said he had ingested magic mushrooms, which contain the hallucinogen psilocybin. The incident played into a running debate over whether the Netherlands' famously liberal drug laws are too lax with psychedelic mushrooms. Also in July, a Danish tourist raced his car through a campsite, and a 19-year old man from Iceland jumped out of a window; both had taken magic mushrooms, known in Dutch as "paddos," as had a French teenager who jumped off a bridge to her death in March.
Since then, most parties in the Dutch parliament have been calling for a clampdown on magic mushrooms. In dried form, the fungi are already prohibited, but fresh mushrooms can still be legally sold in the Netherlands. The country's public health minister, Ab Klink, has so far steered clear of banning psilocybin mushrooms altogether, in part because his ministry considers it legally problematic to ban a product that grows naturally. But in May he commissioned fresh research into the risks of "paddo" use, and has said he would consider the results, due next month, in deciding how to act.
This being the Netherlands, critics say even that measured reaction is too precipitous. They argue that while "paddo" use may have been involved in serious incidents, it's too easy to single out the drug as the cause of them. Municipal heath services determined that the man who killed his dog had a psychosis unrelated to the drug, and the Danish racer consumed alcohol and smoked marijuana before taking his "paddo." Amsterdam municipal heath services report that the number of mushroom-related incidents, while rising, is still dwarfed by problems caused by alcohol. Advocates of a ban counter that the easy availability of magic mushrooms amounts to an invitation to further tragedies.
There is general agreement, however, that foreigners seem to have more trouble with 'shrooms that the Dutch themselves do. In Amsterdam, some 90 percent of ambulance dispatches related to magic mushroom use this year were for foreign visitors, especially from Britain, trailed at a distance by Italy, the U.S. and France. "Most problems are caused by foreigners who come here on cheap flights to take as many drugs as they can find," says Guy Boels, chairman of VLOS, an association of Dutch magic mushrooms retailers. "They hardly sleep, they drink alcohol and smoke pot as much as they can and then take a paddo on top of that."
Boels says the risks of reckless behavior are quite small as long as paddos are not mixed with alcohol or drugs. Still, VLOS supports a proposed regulation to ban the sale of the mushrooms to minors and calls for a registration system to identify "weekend tourists." For now, that watchful but tolerant approach is getting the endorsement of Dutch public heath experts. Unless the new research commissioned by the minister arrives at new insights, the government appears more likely to play the regulation card than to support a total ban on magic mushrooms.
Dutch government will ban hallucinogenic mushrooms
Oct. 12, 2007, 7:31AM
Dutch government will ban hallucinogenic mushrooms
By TOBY STERLING
Associated Press
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands — The Dutch government said today that it will ban the sale of hallucinogenic mushrooms, rolling back one element of the country's permissive drug policy after a series of high-profile negative incidents.
The decision will go into effect within several months and doesn't need parliamentary approval, Justice Ministry spokesman Wim van der Weegen said.
"We intend to forbid the sale of 'magic' mushrooms," he said. "That means shops caught doing so will be closed."
Under the country's famed tolerance policy, marijuana and hashish are technically illegal but police don't bother to prosecute people for possession of small amounts, and they are sold openly in designated cafes.
Possession of "hard" drugs like cocaine and Ecstasy is illegal.
Psilocybin, the main active chemical in the mushrooms, has been illegal under international law since 1971. However, mushrooms that are fresh and unprocessed in any way have continued to be sold legally in the Netherlands, on the theory that it was impossible to determine how much of the naturally occurring substance any given mushroom contains.
Mushrooms will fall somewhere in the middle of the Dutch legality scale.
"We're not talking about a non-prosecution policy, but we'll be targeting sellers," Van der Weegen said.
Van der Weegen said that, in the end, that was also the reason the policy proved unworkable.
"The problem with mushrooms is that their effect is unpredictable. It's impossible to estimate what amount will have what effect."
Calls for a re-evaluation arose after a French 17-year-old, Gaelle Caroff, jumped from a building after eating psychedelic mushrooms while on a school visit to Amsterdam.
Caroff's parents blamed her death on hallucinations brought on by the mushrooms, though the teenager had suffered from psychiatric problems in the past. Her photographs was splashed across newspapers around the country.
Since Caroff's death, other dramatic stories involving mushrooms have been reported in the Dutch press, though mushroom vendors complained that each of the cases involved tourists who were using other drugs and alcohol at the same time — against their usage instructions for mushrooms.
The users include:
— A British tourist, 22, who ran amok in a hotel, breaking his window and slicing his hand badly.
— An Icelandic tourist, 19, who thought he was being chased and jumped from a balcony, breaking both his legs.
— A Danish tourist, 29, who drove his car wildly through a campground, narrowly missing people sleeping in their tents.
Amsterdam mayor Job Cohen had suggested a 3-day "cooling off" period between ordering them and using them. Most mushrooms sold in Amsterdam are sold to tourists, and the city's reputation for liberal drug policies and legalized prostitution are major tourist attractions.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/chr ... 08474.html
Dutch government will ban hallucinogenic mushrooms
By TOBY STERLING
Associated Press
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands — The Dutch government said today that it will ban the sale of hallucinogenic mushrooms, rolling back one element of the country's permissive drug policy after a series of high-profile negative incidents.
The decision will go into effect within several months and doesn't need parliamentary approval, Justice Ministry spokesman Wim van der Weegen said.
"We intend to forbid the sale of 'magic' mushrooms," he said. "That means shops caught doing so will be closed."
Under the country's famed tolerance policy, marijuana and hashish are technically illegal but police don't bother to prosecute people for possession of small amounts, and they are sold openly in designated cafes.
Possession of "hard" drugs like cocaine and Ecstasy is illegal.
Psilocybin, the main active chemical in the mushrooms, has been illegal under international law since 1971. However, mushrooms that are fresh and unprocessed in any way have continued to be sold legally in the Netherlands, on the theory that it was impossible to determine how much of the naturally occurring substance any given mushroom contains.
Mushrooms will fall somewhere in the middle of the Dutch legality scale.
"We're not talking about a non-prosecution policy, but we'll be targeting sellers," Van der Weegen said.
Van der Weegen said that, in the end, that was also the reason the policy proved unworkable.
"The problem with mushrooms is that their effect is unpredictable. It's impossible to estimate what amount will have what effect."
Calls for a re-evaluation arose after a French 17-year-old, Gaelle Caroff, jumped from a building after eating psychedelic mushrooms while on a school visit to Amsterdam.
Caroff's parents blamed her death on hallucinations brought on by the mushrooms, though the teenager had suffered from psychiatric problems in the past. Her photographs was splashed across newspapers around the country.
Since Caroff's death, other dramatic stories involving mushrooms have been reported in the Dutch press, though mushroom vendors complained that each of the cases involved tourists who were using other drugs and alcohol at the same time — against their usage instructions for mushrooms.
The users include:
— A British tourist, 22, who ran amok in a hotel, breaking his window and slicing his hand badly.
— An Icelandic tourist, 19, who thought he was being chased and jumped from a balcony, breaking both his legs.
— A Danish tourist, 29, who drove his car wildly through a campground, narrowly missing people sleeping in their tents.
Amsterdam mayor Job Cohen had suggested a 3-day "cooling off" period between ordering them and using them. Most mushrooms sold in Amsterdam are sold to tourists, and the city's reputation for liberal drug policies and legalized prostitution are major tourist attractions.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/chr ... 08474.html
Cannabis is The Tree of Life