Market stalls blamed for magic mushroom boom
Market stalls selling magic mushrooms helped kick-start demand for the powerful mind altering drug in the late 1990s, a report revealed today.
The study by the European Union’s drugs agency found the deadly fungi was openly available from so-called "smartshops" promoting herbal highs, websites and markets encouraging young people to try it out.
It said 5% of 15-24-year-old have taken hallucinogenic "shrooms" and 20% of school kids said it was easy to get their hands on them.
Despite it being made illegal to sell the fungi in January of this year, the report warned shops were looking at selling alternative, legal, types of mushrooms to give users a high.
The warning comes as an inquest is to resume into the death of a 33-year-old man who fell from a fourth floor apartment in Dun Laoghaire after eating magic mushrooms.
Colm Hodkinson bought a box of the drug for €25 to take at a Hallowe’en party in 2005 but less than an hour after eating them he was dead.
The successful young businessman and keen golfer had been a first-time user of the drug.
The inquest into his death is due to be heard at Dublin County Coroner’s Court sitting in Tallaght tomorrow by Dr Kieran Geraghty.
Magic mushrooms have been blamed for two other deaths across Europe including a poisoning in France and a suicide in the Czech Republic.
Six EU countries have tightened their legislation on hallucinogenic mushrooms since 2001 to coincide with recent increases in prevalence of use, Denmark, Holland, Germany, Estonia, the UK and Ireland.
Reports in the UK suggest that legislation has had an impact on the availability of mushrooms and overall volume of internet sales.
And the EU study showed that unpredictable potency and negative effects such as, nausea, panic attacks, and/or lack of sociable effects may all contribute to limiting recreational use of hallucinogenic mushrooms.
