Bye Bye Mushrooms in the Netherlands

griffdaddy

I know they've bandied about the idea of banning mushrooms in the Netherlands for a while, but it looks as though from Monday on they're actually gonna be illegal.
http://www.kpnvandaag.nl/#ExtendedNews|/contentid=33101
That's in Dutch but it basically says that from Monday on they're gonna be illegal, but the lawyers are still discussing it, and that the mayor of Amsterdam says he doesn't want to ban them yet and won't be doing it on Monday. It also says that the number of cases of when it goes wrong to when it goes ok is tiny, and that research shows that recently the times it goes wrong is starting to stabilize or occur less frequently than before. 98% of bad cases are tourists, so there's fears that they'd essentially be imposing unneccessary legislation on Dutch people for the sake of foreign safety. They also criticise the guy who's advocating the ban, saying that he hasn't done much research into the thing and takes things that are still open to dispute as fact. It says that it'll hurt the tourist industry, and that the headshops are gonna fight it all the way. The whole thing came about because of a 17 year old tourist who jumped off a bridge after taking them with....you guessed it, alcohol. This is how a measured debate occurs in a government that isn't reactionary though, and fair play to the Dutch government for even discussing the whole thing this openly.

jimmycrackcorm

/rushes off to Centra to buy all their mushrooms before it happens here too.

Terry

How dare they. We have a right to get high and so forth.

griffdaddy

Terry wrote: »

How dare they. We have a right to get high and so forth.

That's not really my point, my point is that we have a right to a government that actually addresses issues.

Cuddlesworth

Terry wrote: »

How dare they. We have a right to get high and so forth.

For the Dutch I would say its more like drink or smokes being made illegal here through groundless facts. They have had the right for a long time to take certain drugs and as a society they have proven they are capable of using them correctly and in moderation. The problems nearly always amount from tourists.

Terry

Yeah. I wasn't being entirely serious there.

Cuddlesworth

Terry wrote: »

Yeah. I wasn't being entirely serious there.

Where was my smiley face then?

griffdaddy

Terry wrote: »

Yeah. I wasn't being entirely serious there.

Take your hate crimes somewhere else narc, we just wanna have a good time :pac:

Wertz

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Where was my smiley face then?

They've been banned after a new poster misinterpretted one whilst reading AH when drunk, and jumped off his appartment balcony...

ScumLord

You gotta love the Dutch. Everything's a grey area as long as your sensible.

mp3guy

I hope everyone here knows they're talking about normal mushrooms.

Zangetsu

Did you know drinking gets you drunk! Ban!

Professey Chin

Zangetsu wrote: »

Did you know drinking gets you drunk! Ban!

LIES!!!My memory fragments tell me im perfectly coherent and sensible when drinking

Prof.Badass

Terry wrote: »

Yeah. I wasn't being entirely serious there.

damn. I thought you had finally realised the folly in trying to interfere in adults personal lives

ScumLord

mp3guy wrote: »

I hope everyone here knows they're talking about normal mushrooms.

Well that's ok then, I never expect a proper fry up in a foreign country anyway.

The_Minister

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Where was my smiley face then?

The use of smileys in non-serious posts is generally judged on the standard of a reasonably intelligent poster, as set forth by Admin Vexorg in Bubbles v De Power! (2000). This standard holds that the use of a smiley is only mandatory where it is possible that a reasonably intelligent poster would not get the joke. The actual intelligence of the poster being responded to is not taken into account.

ART6

What about the human rights of anyone who wants to eat toxic mushrooms then????:rolleyes:

griffdaddy

ART6 wrote: »

What about the human rights of anyone who wants to eat toxic mushrooms then????:rolleyes:

I'm not gonna go into a debate about alcohol versus other drugs because that's not the point, but alcohol is poison, literally. I think mushrooms should be illegal, or at least very, very strictly controlled, but I don't presuppose that my opinion is anymore valid more than anyone else's just because I feel my lifestyle is the one that's acceptable or something. In Holland there's heaps of people who don't drink and just have the odd joint or mushroom session or whatever, and their opinion counts as much as anyone else's does because the government there haven't become so blinkered to accept that alcohol is some kind of shining honest drug in a world of disgusting weird drugs. There's more to the world than drinking pints at a Sunday carvery or heading out and getting wasted with the (insert relevent social collective here.) There's nothing wrong with that, but don't throw your toys out of the pram when people want an alternative that has been legal for many years and they are as absolutely entitled to as you are to your pint.

Cuddlesworth

griffdaddy wrote: »

I'm not gonna go into a debate about alcohol versus other drugs because that's not the point, but alcohol is poison, literally. I think mushrooms should be illegal, or at least very, very strictly controlled, but I don't presuppose that my opinion is anymore valid more than anyone else's just because I feel my lifestyle is the one that's acceptable or something. In Holland there's heaps of people who don't drink and just have the odd joint or mushroom session or whatever, and their opinion counts as much as anyone else's does because the government there haven't become so blinkered to accept that alcohol is some kind of shining honest drug in a world of disgusting weird drugs. There's more to the world than drinking pints at a Sunday carvery or heading out and getting wasted with the (insert relevent social collective here.) There's nothing wrong with that, but don't throw your toys out of the pram when people want an alternative that has been legal for many years and they are as absolutely entitled to as you are to your pint.

You see the problem with that post is that a smiley was used in what you quoted. And I thought I was bad.

griffdaddy

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

You see the problem with that post is that a smiley was used in what you quoted. And I thought I was bad.

yeah, meaning it was sarcastic? and i responded to it as such?

Wertz

ART6 wrote: »

What about the human rights of anyone who wants to eat toxic mushrooms then????:rolleyes:

Toxic?
Mushrooms of the kind that were banned here 2 years back and that the Dutch want to ban now, contain psilocybin as their main active hallucinogenic substance.
On the LD50 scale of toxicity, psilocybin comes behind THC (cannabis) and caffeine, in terms of it's danger of killing someone V level of dose.
http://www.erowid.org/psychoactives/health/psychoactives_ld50s.shtml

Now on the other hand if you're talking about amanita muscaria or fly agaric, one of the ones that wasn't banned here during Harney's kneejerk, then that is indeed toxic and in much smaller doses, although death is rare once the victim is found in time.

griffdaddy

Wertz wrote: »

...although death is rare once the victim is found in time.

haha, wouldn't count on that on those things, they could be anywhere.

the_syco

Although it's legal to sell weed there, it's illegal to grow it. Thus, lots of the cafe's are loosing their sources, as their sources get arrested.

Wertz

They certainly could...of course if you start making stuff like this illegal, people take it in secret and away from other's that might be able to assist in the event of an bad reaction or an OD....

griffdaddy

the_syco wrote: »

Although it's legal to sell weed there, it's illegal to grow it. Thus, lots of the cafe's are loosing their sources, as their sources get arrested.

It's illegal to sell it as well, it's just tolerated. That's a big problem there though, you're right, but there must be some kind of unofficial tolerance for people growing it as well. I mean, it's not like it's hard to trace it back to where it comes from, and the volume of weed some of the coffeeshops go through is immense, i mean, it must be into the kilos per day. You can grow up to 5 plants yourself, and realistically it's fúcking impossible to get done for anything eeven remotely reasonable. There are people with 60 or 70 plants caught all the time and they only end up with a big fine or a suspended sentence, going to jail would require you to be growing some serious amount altogether.