Pubdate: Thu, 30 May 2002
Source: Detroit Free Press (MI)
Contact:  2002 Detroit Free Press
Website: http://www.freep.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/125
Author: Hans Greimel, Associated Press
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/hallucinogens.htm (Hallucinogens)

JAPAN IS PLUGGING DRUG LOOPHOLE 

Magic Mushrooms To Bring Prison Stay 

TOKYO -- Enthusiasts admit it's not the taste that keeps them gobbling the
shriveled brown mushrooms. They're so bitter, many can only choke them down
with orange juice or yogurt. 

The allure is the hallucinogen within, so potent that the fungi are outlawed
in most countries along with cocaine and heroin. 

"It doesn't taste good, but I like to get high," 19-year-old student Wataru
Kanbe said after eating a handful of magic mushrooms at a recent open-air
concert. Best of all, he added with a glassy-eyed stare, doing so is
completely legal. 

Not much longer. 

Alarmed by the soaring popularity of hallucinogenic mushrooms and their
sometimes toxic side effects, Japan's Health Ministry is plugging the legal
loophole that has allowed them to be sold openly and lawfully by trendy
shops, street vendors and mail-order companies advertising in magazines. 

The crackdown -- which takes effect June 6 -- will slap a maximum 7-year
prison term on magic mushroom possession, putting it on par with the penalty
for cocaine possession. 

Although the appeal of the mushrooms reflects changing Japanese attitudes
toward drugs, it also highlights the government's increasingly desperate
battle against them. 

Japan has carefully nurtured its hard-line reputation, including leveling
life sentences on heroin traffickers.

But a 1990 overhaul of the drug law overlooked one point. It banned the
psychoactive drugs psilocybin and psilocin, but not the mushrooms that
naturally produce them. 

It didn't take long for entrepreneurs to start hawking the psychedelic fungi
to curious teens and rebellious hipsters in search of a legal high. 

So-called head shops mushroomed overnight in Tokyo entertainment districts,
selling packs for 1,800-3,000 yen ($13 to $23) a pop. They're laid out in
fancy glass display cases. 

Most are imported from the Netherlands, where they are grown on farms. But
even hand-picked, wild liberty cap toadstools from Scotland turn up for $20
a gram. 

"You can find them anywhere," said Hideo Eno at the Health Ministry's
narcotics division. 

The ministry said there were at least 11 species of magic mushrooms --
technically classified as poisonous plants and not drugs -- being sold in
Japan. As long as they were not labeled as food, that was permitted. 

Takahito Watanabe, manager of PsychoPompos, a closet-sized head shop
brazenly advertising itself with a marijuana-leaf signboard, said his
desiccated mushrooms were for display purposes only. 

"Or use as good-luck charms," he said. 

The Health Ministry has no statistics on the size of the magic-mushroom
market or how many Japanese use them. But their popularity is hinted at by
sales at three stores owned by mushroom magnate Muneo Ogishi. He claims more
than 3,000 people, mostly those in their 20s, stock up every month. 

The increase in use is also underlined by the increase in the number of
people hospitalized for overdosing from one person in 1997 to 38 in 2000 --
not huge numbers but enough to demand action, Eno said. 

"Young people are curious. They say it's fun and safe. But really it
contains a dangerous narcotic," he said. 

Users say the effect of magic mushrooms is like being sealed in a cocoon of
euphoria where street lights look like prisms and neon blurs into rainbows.

But the mushrooms can also trigger nausea and fits of paranoia or panic. 

Mushrooms are not considered addictive, but government officials view them
as a gateway to experimentation with other drugs. 

Narcotics use in Japan peaked during the economic boom of the 1980s, but has
been on the rise again. Except for a dip in 1998, arrests for drug offenses
rose consistently from 1995 to 2000. 

Last year, police took in a record haul of recreational drugs, seizing 1,753
pounds of marijuana and confiscating 118,000 tablets of ecstasy, a
40-percent increase from the year before. 

The changing mores were underlined in a recent government poll that said
nearly 20 percent of high school students nationwide think it should be
legal for them to use drugs if they wish. 

"Drug abuse is on the rise, and legalized magic mushrooms aren't helping,"
said Chikashi Okutsu, director of Asia Pacific Addiction Institute, a Tokyo
drug abuse treatment center.
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