
Washington man facing prison after foraging for wild psilocybin mushrooms - anythingnonidin
https://www.psymposia.com/magazine/washington-man-facing-prison-foraging-wild-mushrooms/
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Overtonwindow
I gave him some money because I do think the law is silly. He's out picking
wild mushrooms. If some turn out to be psychedelics then so be it. It was in
nature. Maybe if we were selling them I'd have a confern, but if the man wants
to pick mushrooms, let him pick mushrooms.

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qhoc
Washington wildlife and forest protection is dead serious. I mean they
invested a ton to enforce the rules and make sure people doing wrong things
got punished. I, one time, got a $150 ticket just because I was a bit curious
and dug into the sand for some geoduck.

~~~
tluyben2
That's what should've happened ; a fine.

~~~
Overtonwindow
I agree, a fine would be perfectly acceptable. Jail, however, is ridiculous.

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mchannon
As someone who can't stand the taste of them I'm still enthralled by the
prospect of collecting mushrooms for fun and their culinary value. The trouble
I run into is how I have no idea what's good to eat, what'll make you sick,
what'll get you high, and what'll just simply kill you.

Guidebooks are worse than useless, because you can never be sure that the
slight differences between the mushroom you're looking at and your best guess
in the guidebook are unimportant or a distinction that means the one you
picked is fatal instead of edible.

There's no app for this. [EDIT: Ok, there are apps for this, but there's
always room for improvement]

There should be. And this guy could earn a modest income helping some semi-
talented ML and mobile engineers in Washington build one with his wealth of
knowledge.

Take a picture of a mushroom with your phone, and it'll help you tell what you
can expect from it.

Nothing helps with legal or medical problems like not having to worry about
relatively tiny amounts of money.

~~~
corndoge
No possible way a smartphone camera and a classifier could identify two
extremely similar mushrooms better than a human expert

~~~
Retric
You don't need to identify them, you need to rule out the unsafe possibility's
and can reject anything that's at all risky without significant downside.
However, these kind of vary narrow tests are actually fairly easy for ML.

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StavrosK
Less clickbaity title: "Washington man facing prison for drug possession".

Whether someone should be jailed for picking psilocybin mushrooms is up for
discussion (hint: they shouldn't), but he wasn't arrested for picking
Portobellos.

~~~
gotthemwmds
Actually, after reading the whole article, he was picking an unidentified
mushroom that later proved to contain psilocybin. This point seems relevant.

~~~
eesmith
There was a sign that said "NO MUSHROOM PICKING: VIOLATORS SUBJECT TO CRIMINAL
CITATION", and the rules for the park say "Wildlife, plants and all park
buildings, signs and tables and other structures are protected; removal or
damage of any kind is prohibited." \- [http://parks.state.wa.us/179/Rules-
Regulations](http://parks.state.wa.us/179/Rules-Regulations)

Nor does the argument "There’s no injured party involved in any of this" hold
water. There are many illegal things where there is no direct injury to a
person.

Taking petrified wood from the Petrified National Forest, taking trinitite
from the site of the first nuclear bomb test, knocking over stone formations
in Goblin Valley State Park, graffiti and littering, and many more.

He also picked 10 Psilocybe azurescens, in addition to the 10 odd mushrooms
mushrooms which he thought might be a subspecies, or perhaps new Psilocybe
species. It's not like he had no idea he was collecting something which
contained psilocybin.

~~~
hnaccy
The injured party in your examples is the public because it involves damaging
a national park or similar space.

Unless these mushrooms are going extinct or something he's not hurting the
environment.

~~~
eesmith
Yet if he had followed those laws he wouldn't have ended up in this situation.

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k_sze
Which makes me wonder: do mycologists (mushroom scientists) get a legal
license to pick mushrooms wherever the heck they want? Let's say this really
is a completely new, unidentified species that only grows in this national
park. Then what?

~~~
pvaldes
Good point, you normally will need a license to pick anything autochthonous in
a national park, even for scientific purposes.

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pstuart
I challenge anybody to prove how this makes us safer.

~~~
eesmith
So what?

Preventing graffiti at a state or national park doesn't make us safe either.
We still prosecute those who graffiti.

Poaching rabbits doesn't make us safer. It's also illegal.

~~~
pstuart
Graffiti is vandalism, i.e., a property crime. Poaching, by definition, is
hunting an animal that is restricted for varying reasons, from being a
protected species to herd management, etc. It's effectively taking something
that doesn't belong to you.

In this case, he did break the law by picking mushrooms where it was
specifically prohibited, and it would be reasonable to cite him for that fact.

But it wasn't about theft, it was about the fact that he wanted to ingest a
compound which would alter his state of consciousness. That should not be a
crime.

~~~
eesmith
Thank you for agreeing with my point that there are more ways to judge the
validity of a law than its ability to protect us.

I list more examples at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15052587](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15052587)
.

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marcoperaza
> _Corbett has been frustrated by what he considers insufficient or even
> counterproductive advice by his lawyers, who have urged him to plead guilty.
> They have refused to discuss anything relating to mushrooms or entheogens,
> and hope Corbett will settle for the plea deal and probation. But Corbett is
> determined to challenge the law and prove his innocence. He has since fired
> his attorneys and he hopes to hire one who will best represent him and his
> unique situation._

Not a very smart move. The lawyers he fired are right.

~~~
lovich
They are right if the goal is to get the least amount of punishment.

It sounds like he wants to protect his rights. In the US system yhe
prosecutors throw the book at you and offer plea deals that are a small
fraction of the original charge. They then then use their resources to go
heavily after anyone who doesn't take a plea deal.

That means you get to pick defending your rights or avoiding punishment, not
both

~~~
marcoperaza
There's really nothing to defend when you're that guilty. There is no "right"
to pick or possess magic mushrooms, which he is admitting he did.

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ringaroundthetx
His crime was admitting to the charge the state is levying against him.

Oops.

