Thailand has legal mushroom

Photo: health ministry/the other party

Caption: Former Minister of Health Anutin Charnvirakul receives massive criticism from people who believe the law can create chaos in traffic

Text: Ludvig Storn

Date: 04/26/24

According to furious politicians and drug organizations, the drug can lead to life-threatening situations in traffic, because people who use it do not know what they are doing, and can put other people in life-threatening situations. Canada, the USA, Holland and other countries also have pilot projects, but Thailand has an official policy that allows the hallucinogen. Sources the other side has spoken to say that it may be short-lived.

Shock

Foreign observers react strongly to Thailand's allowing a prescription hallucinogen. Even if, as in Norway, you are told by your doctor that you cannot combine a drug with driving, many drug experts point out that people do it anyway. The authorities point out that clinical trials in Australia of psilocybin and MDMA as medicine for certain types of depression and post-traumatic stress disorder indicate that it can have a positive effect.

Songkran shock

It is especially after the annual water festival in Thailand is over each year, - that criticism rains down on the legalization of drugs. By 2024 at the latest, 1,279 were injured in traffic accidents in just four days. On Songkran Sunday, 38 people died and 311 others were injured in 317 traffic accidents, bringing the four-day total to 162. Health authorities say there is no evidence that either hallucinogens or marijuana are the cause of the accidents. Nevertheless, the drug organizations have had a hard time.

Madness

Now that the former health minister has become deputy prime minister, the question is whether he will soon have to eat some camels and go back to liberal politics. His boss, Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin, is not exactly known for being in favor of such a policy. On the contrary, he believes it is a disaster for Thailand. Opposition politicians in Thailand also point out that even law-abiding people who do not intend to break the doctor's ban on, for example, driving, may end up doing so anyway, simply because they do not understand what they are doing.

Contact a doctor

The substance that the Minister of Health allowed in 2023 is a variant of the Norwegian pointed mushroom. Psilocybe semilanceata is a poisonous mushroom that contains the toxin psilocybin. In Norway, people who have been in contact with the substance must immediately contact Poison Information.

Warns

The Norwegian Drug Information strongly warns against its use, and says, among other things, that the mushroom can induce feelings of fear, panic, anxiety, disorientation and confusion. Now the mushroom is legal in Thailand, and the country's somewhat chaotic traffic can thus become even worse. But what makes doctors and psychologists extra skeptical about its use is primarily that the person using the substance has impaired judgement, which can put both the user and innocent people in dangerous situations.

Getting dangerous

Ingesting the mushroom can disillusion you and induce confusion and anxiety. Mentally unstable people are also particularly susceptible to severe psychoses when consuming boletus mushrooms.

Historical directive

In the historic directive, the Thai Ministry of Public Health has also approved the use of opium and together with the so-called magic mushroom. The new law, which came as a shock to most, was first revealed in the Royal Gazette newspaper. The newspaper does not know where the authorities will get the so-called magic mushrooms.

Immediate effect

The law came into effect immediately after Health Minister Cholnan Srikaew signed the paper. In Thailand, the Norwegian mushroom goes by the name "Magic Mushrooms". Like the Norwegian mushrooms, the Thai ones also contain psilocybin, which causes powerful hallucinations and altered perception of reality.

Armageddon

Anutin Charnvirakul, who was the minister behind the legalization, can certainly expect a media storm in the coming weeks, at least until the fury after Songran's many accidents subsides. The question is whether the country with so many traffic victims can afford another legal drug which, in the worst case, can create the purest armageddon in traffic. Globally, however, the trend is that neither marijuana nor hallucinogens are the cause of traffic accidents, and therefore the regulations can also be softened. Oddly enough, only Holland has tightened the rules recently, and they have also made outdoor bans onmarijuana smokingi Amsterdam.

Norway

In Norway, both parts are still listed on the drug list, at the same time that researchers at Sykehuset i Østfold are researching the potential of the hallucinogenic substances as medicine.