Users can come to the attention of the legal system due to possession, intoxication or criminal behavior that occurred after ingestion of the mushrooms. The active drug in these mushrooms is called psilocybin, which is chemically related to Lysergic Acid Diethylamide (LSD). It has a long history of being used in religious rituals in Mexico and Central America. Users are typically teenagers and young adults and it is not known to cause physical dependency. Many users attempt to gather mushrooms themselves, leading to dire results as mis-identification of mushrooms can have serious consequences. In this way, poisonous mushrooms have been mistakenly ingested by users resulting in illness and death.
Our topic for the criminal newsletter this month is Psilocybin/Mushrooms. Toxicology is a key component of many criminal cases, and mushrooms are certainly not absent from the list of drugs that come up in discovery. The subtopics for this month are:
- Overview (5/9/14)
- Ingestion (5/16/14)
- “Bad Trip” (5/23/14)
- Detection (5/30/14)
