Notes from the US underground mushroom market

This article from DoubleBlind magazine comments: "In the long shadow of federal prohibition, a market for psychedelic shroom products is flourishing—and it’s rife with counterfeits and adulterants" and goes on to say "Scores of New York City businesses, including Andersen’s (now closed) CBD store, have begun selling illegal psilocybin products in recent years, fueled by the promise of significant profit and by a sense of immunity in the face of an under-resourced legal system. Psilocybin is unambiguously illegal in New York State, at the federal level in the United States, and across most of the world. Like other classic psychedelics (LSD, mescaline, and DMT), the compound is currently categorized as a Schedule 1 substance under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), meaning it’s been deemed by the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to offer no medical value and to carry a high potential for abuse. Distributing psilocybin is a felony in New York State with a maximum prison sentence of seven years. New York City famously (or infamously) has the largest police force in the country. And yet, the city’s illicit mushroom market is not only flourishing, it’s brazenly public. This past fall and winter, hoping to untangle this paradox, I began visiting shops across the city that were selling psilocybin products and speaking with the people working behind the counters. I also spoke with police officers, government officials, drug policy experts, mushroom cultivators, chemists, and a man who, while tripping, was nearly attacked by a Mona Lisa that crawled out of his TV. Gradually, what began to emerge was a picture of a rapidly-expanding underground psychedelic market that’s been growing in tandem with hype and excitement surrounding the much-publicized “psychedelic renaissance”—and which, being entirely unregulated, presents some potentially serious risks both to public health and to the ongoing political effort to destigmatize and decriminalize psychedelics. It also quickly became clear that the phenomenon was much more widespread than I’d originally believed."

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