UK Government Goes Mad For Mushrooms

British tax authorities reclassified magic mushrooms as food this week, to
cash in on Britain¹s burgeoning psychedelic drug business, through VAT tax
revenues.

According to the Mirror, treasury officials expect to raise over £1million
pounds from the estimated 300 shroom shops, despite recent comments from
Home Office Minister Caroline Flint, who said she considered mushrooms sold
in shops to be Class A drugs.

"The Government's attitude to mushrooms is schizophrenic, while
criminalising them in their dried or boiled state, it does all it can to tax
you when they're in their natural, legal state," Daily Telegraph columnist/
young gun Harry Mount declared.

"It would make much more sense to make the mushrooms, and all other drugs,
entirely legal," he suggested. "Nothing is more likely to make them
unfashionable."

Whether NME now tries to revive their "third summer of love" campaign
remains unclear particularly since they're presumably pre-occupied with
latest circulation figures showing they slumped by 3.9% to 70,000 a week.
The rest of the rock press also took a battering (though no 'rock is dead"
stories have appeared yet) while Mixmag lost 5.2% falling from 53,000 to
50,000.

(Caroline Flint's Independent letter: "I would view the supply of magic
mushrooms, as prepared or as a product, such as selling imported, packaged
mushrooms in shops, as the supply of a Class A drug. . .")

Tags

• Skrufff