Blunderov
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"We think in generalities, we live in details"
  
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RE: virus: Eat Me
« on: 2005-01-04 07:19:34 » |
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[Blunderov] Well, the way I see it is this; if one has the right to free
speech then one must necessarily have the right to free thought. If one
has the right to free thought then one necessarily has the right to
alter one's consciousness.
Apparently something like 20% of young black males in the USA have drug
related criminal records and that if every prisoner convicted of a
marijuana offence was released the prisons would be under-crowded.
A lot of people have a direct financial interest in maintaining the
status quo
Magic mushroom case judge tells prosecutor: chill out
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1373954,00.html
Mark Honigsbaum
Wednesday December 15, 2004
The Guardian
The law on the distribution and sale of magic mushrooms was thrown into
disarray yesterday after a court decision to stay the prosecution of two
men accused of illegally selling the hallucinogenic fungi at a record
shop in Gloucester.
Arguing that Home Office advice to importers and distributors was
"fudged", the crown court recorder Claire Miskin told Dennis Mardle and
Colin Evans that the law was so ambiguous that to put them on trial
amounted to an "abuse of process". She recommended that parliament
consider new legislation to clarify the legal position.
It is the first time the issue of magic mushrooms has reached the crown
court, though potential court actions are pending in Birmingham and
Canterbury.
Mr Mardle, 52, and Mr Evans, 57, both from Gloucester, began selling
magic mushrooms after reading an article in the Guardian last November
which cited Home Office advice that while psilocin and psilocybin, the
psychoactive constituents of the mushrooms, were illegal, it was "not
illegal to sell or give away a freshly picked mushroom".
But earlier this year the Home Office wrote to mushroom importers saying
that hallucinogenic mushrooms might constitute a "product" under the
Misuse of Drugs Act if they had been "cultivated, transported to the
marketplace, packaged, weighed and labelled".
Although the courts had previously ruled that it was legal to possess
magic mushrooms except where they had been "altered by the hand of man",
the Home Office also advised that merely chilling the mushrooms might
constitute alteration.
It was on this basis that Gloucester police raided Mr Mardle's and Mr
Evans's shop, Collectors Choice, in March, seizing four bags of
mushrooms and one punnet from a fridge and six further punnets stored in
a cool bag behind the counter.
The local prosecutor, Phillip Warren, told the court that while the law
prohibited the freezing of the mushrooms, the legality of cooling or
storing them in a fridge had never been tested and the case should go to
trial in order to clarify the situation.
However, after hearing from experts that chilling did not alter the
chemical makeup of the mushrooms, Ms Miskin ruled that to bring the case
to trial would be a breach of the men's rights.
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