Ministry of Public Security verifies that "magic mushrooms" contain drugs

On July 30, Lieutenant General Dong Dai Loc, Deputy Director General of the General Department of Police and Director of the Department of Investigation Police on Drug-related Crimes (C47, Ministry of Public Security), assigned the Department's professional units to investigate and verify information about "drug mushrooms".

Contains two absolutely prohibited active ingredients

Lieutenant General Dong Dai Loc also requested that the national drug crime investigation police force be notified of the appearance of "drug mushrooms" (if any) to proactively take preventive and combat measures.

Previously, in the press, Lieutenant Colonel Nguyen Van Cuong, Department of Drug Crime Investigation, Hai Phong City Police, said that this agency had just arrested a case of illegal possession and use of "drug mushrooms".

The detectives discovered a group of people possessing a type of dried plant that resembled a mushroom. Through investigation, these people confessed that the dried food was “drug mushrooms”. They had ordered the mushrooms online from abroad and then sent them to Vietnam by post.

To the naked eye, these mushrooms look no different from edible mushrooms, and have a similar aroma to straw mushrooms. However, they contain extremely toxic drugs.

Through testing, it was discovered that the mushrooms contained psilocine and psilotcin. These two active ingredients are in list 1 - drugs that are absolutely prohibited from use in both medicine and social life of Decree 73/2018/ND-CP regulating the list of drugs and precursors.

Awareness of youth and students about drugs is still limited.

Lieutenant Colonel Nguyen Van Cuong said that "magic mushrooms" or "magic mushrooms", "psychedelic mushrooms", "magic mushrooms", "psychedelic mushrooms" are mushrooms belonging to the Cortinariaceae family that grow quite commonly in many places around the world such as North America, Mexico, South America, the Scandinavian peninsula and some regions in Asia.

This mushroom is characterized by its frequent color changes, and when eaten can cause hallucinations due to its toxicity. Because of its color-changing properties, it is known as the “magic mushroom”.

“Each mushroom is cut into 2-3 pieces, the long mushroom stem can be cut into more pieces. And each small piece like that will cost about 500,000 VND for grade 1 goods. Psilocine and psilotcin are natural active ingredients present in the mushroom, not due to marinating,” said Lieutenant Colonel Cuong.

Lieutenant Colonel Bui Duc Thiem, Deputy Head of Division 5, Department of Drug Crime Investigation (Ministry of Public Security), said that in the coming time, the Drug Crime Investigation Department will continue to coordinate with relevant agencies to strengthen propaganda work on the harmful effects of drugs in general, and new drugs in particular, to all classes of people. In particular, focusing on teenagers, students and pupils. Because their awareness of the harmful effects of drugs is still very limited, they believe that using synthetic drugs causes less harm and is difficult to cause addiction.

In addition, continue to effectively coordinate the implementation of the coordination regulations between the police force, border guards, customs and coast guard in preventing and combating crimes in border areas, border gates and at sea. This is to prevent the source of synthetic drugs from being illegally transported into the country from abroad.

According to Lieutenant Colonel Bui Duc Thiem, in the past, some drugs appeared in Vietnam such as American weed, khat leaves... at first were not on the list, so fighting this type of crime was difficult.

Decree 73/2018, which has just been issued, has updated and added 514 narcotic substances to the banned list, 44 precursors to the strictly controlled list... Those who illegally buy, sell, store, transport and use "drug mushrooms" will be strictly handled./.