Confused Courts & Home Grows

Britain's mushroom adventure in the early 1980s

The 1980s marked a break with what has been called the ‘post-war consensus’ of social democracy in Britain. Reacting to a sluggish economy and widespread industrial disputes, Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government came to power in 1979 and began a process of privatization that continued for over a decade. The early years of the 1980s also saw a huge spike in unemployment rates, peaking at over 11% in early 1984. Disillusioned, many unemployed young people headed out to the fields each autumn to pick Liberty Caps.

Various ‘test cases’ the previous decade had resulted in a legal loop hole which appeared to allow for the possession of fresh Psilocybe mushrooms. If these mushrooms were in anyway prepared or processed, however, courts decided that this constituted possession of the chemical psilocybin, which was included in the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act. This, as I will show shortly, was not straightforwardly applied. Moreover, the pharmacratic web of law, medicine and policing sought o…