1977: Year of the Mushroom Cult
A further note on Liberty Caps in 1970s Britain
You may have noticed in my previous article that the year 1977 was largely missing from the British magic mushroom story. In one respect this was because there were far less reported court cases in newspapers. With what appeared to be a clarification of the law the year before, there was little the police and courts could do, and liberty caps were generally caught up in cannabis busts.
Then, in 1978, the police and newspapers rapidly refocused on mushroom use. Many more cannabis-adjacent cases of mushroom possession were reported, drug police chiefs widely commented and advice about liberty caps was privately spread to local forces by the Metropolitan police, and out to the population via the news media. Why should this sudden shift have happened though? The answer, I suggest here, was that it was partly a response to a mushroom-using ‘cult’ being reported in 1977—a fact that has just come to light in my…