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.

³The Government¹s attitude to mushrooms is schizophrenic, while
criminalising them in their dried or boiled state, it does all it can to tax
you when they¹re in their natural, legal state,² Daily Telegraph columnist/
young gun Harry Mount declared.

³It would make much more sense to make the mushrooms, and all other drugs,
entirely legal,² he suggested. ³Nothing is more likely to make them
unfashionable.²

Whether NME now tries to revive their Œthird summer of love¹ campaign
remains unclear particularly since they¹re 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 Œrock is dead¹
stories have appeared yet) while Mixmag lost 5.2% falling from 53,000 to
50,000.

(Caroline Flint¹s Independent letter: ŒI 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. . .¹)

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