POLICE MAKE RARE MUSHROOM BUST

While Serving A Warrant, Concord Authorities Say, They Came Across
Illegal Cultivation Of Psychoactive Fungus

CONCORD -- In the world of narcotics enforcement, seizing cocaine,
methamphetamine and marijuana is a daily chore. But it's rare for
authorities to come across psilocybin mushrooms -- the so-called
'shrooms of the '60s -- as Concord detectives did recently.

Sidney Wayne Bishop, 40, was loudly strumming his electric guitar in
his Colfax Street home on April 21 when he was surprised by a search
warrant from officers looking for marijuana.

In addition to 86 marijuana plants, Lt. Keith Whitaker said, Bishop
was growing psilocybin mushrooms in short Mason jars stacked like
strawberry preserves in a dark, temperature-controlled room.

Officer seized 46 jars containing psilocybin mushrooms weighing, in
total, 2 pounds wet and a half-pound dry, Whitaker said. More than
300 more jars seized were either empty or contained mushroom spores
in early stages of cultivation.

One-eighth of an ounce of psilocybin mushrooms, enough for multiple
users, has a street value of about $40, according to online sites.

"It's not shocking to occasionally to come across psilocybin
mushrooms, people possessing them in small quantities for use,"
Whitaker said. "I can't remember if we've ever come across mushrooms
for cultivation. It was unusual, and we stumbled across it."

It was so atypical in Contra Costa County, drug crimes prosecutor
Dana Filkowski said, that she had to manually enter the charge for
psilocybin mushroom cultivation, which indicates no such cases in years.

"It's Advertisement not like medical marijuana, where it's found a
place in mainstream society," Filkowski said. "I think it's still
associated with a counterculture, or alternative lifestyle."

Bishop faces seven felony drug charges for cultivation and possession
for sale that, if he is convicted, could result in more than six
years in prison, Filkowski said.

Bishop pleaded not guilty before a Contra Costa judge on Monday
dressed in a tan suit. His hair, which falls below his shoulders, was
pulled back in a low ponytail, and he had multiple facial piercings
and body art.

Outside the Martinez courthouse, Bishop, who is being represented by
a public defender, declined to comment on the charges against him in
light of the early stages of the case. He said he's back at home,
where neighbors who heard of his legal troubles gave him $200 to
support him after he was freed from County Jail in lieu of $95,000
bail last month after serving several days.

Bishop said he served 66 months in a federal prison after he was
convicted in his native Iowa in 1988 for distributing LSD. Bishop
challenged federal sentencing guidelines that combine the weight of
the LSD with its carrier medium (in that case, blotter paper) in the
calculation of the total weight of the drug. The conviction was
affirmed by an appeals court before it was denied consideration by
the U.S. Supreme Court, records show.

Bishop said Justice Thurgood Marshall wrote a scathing argument of
why his case should be heard.

Under the federal schedule of controlled substances, psilocybin
mushrooms are in the same class as marijuana, LSD and peyote. The
U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency's San Francisco field office, which
polices California from Bakersfield to Redding, sees about one to two
mushroom cultivation cases a year, said Special Agent Casey McEnry.

Typically, it's found in the possession of mid-to low-level polydrug
traffickers who are selling other drugs such as ecstasy and
marijuana, McEnry said. It's difficult to seek out cultivators,
because mushrooms can be grown so discreetly.

"It's still out there, but on a much smaller scale as it was 40 years
ago," McEnry said. "But if we're still seizing them, it's still being
used and there's still a market for it in the Bay Area."

David Campbell, president of the Mycological Society of San
Francisco, a nonprofit group since the 1950s that hunts and studies
mushrooms for research and hobby, said the history of psilocybin
mushrooms dates thousands of years to shamans and other religious
leaders who would ingest them for spiritual reasons.

Psilocybin mushrooms grow naturally around the world. In urban areas,
they are commonly found in landscaping. In nature, they grow on
animal dung. Although the consensus is that they are not addictive,
they are illegal almost everywhere and can be dangerous to people
predisposed to mental conditions, Campbell said.

He stressed that many kinds of wild mushrooms are poisonous and can
result in death.

"(Psilocybin mushrooms) aren't for casual identification. If you
don't know what you're eating, you should not be eating it," Campbell
said. "It's like a game of Russian roulette."

"No government or drug enforcement agency could rid the world them,"
he said. "They would have to destroy the ecosystem to get of the
mushrooms, because mushrooms are an integral part of the ecosystem,
and they occur naturally."