Goodbye, Fungus Fix

Opponents of the ban point to something else too: a bad mushroom trip is almost exclusively a tourist experience. According to local health authorities, 92 percent of mushroom trippers gone astray between 2004 and 2006 were foreigners (Britain tops the list, with America coming in third). This is due to a new kind of tourism: young people who come to Amsterdam on a cheap flight just for the weekend. For three days they indulge themselves in heavy smoking and drinking, with a couple of mushrooms for dessert—often ending up in the hospital. (All of this summer's three victims had also used large amounts of marijuana and alcohol; the French girl reportedly had a history of depression.)

"After a ban, the number of tourist accidents will surely plummet," says smart shop spokesman van Oyen. "Yet local people enjoying a mushroom every now and then without any problems will have to suffer."

The mushroom ban fits into a wider crackdown on Holland's lenient soft-drug policy. For more than three decades the Dutch state has tolerated the purchase and use of marijuana. But after reaching its peak in 2000, when tens of thousands of European soccer hooligans smoked their way through a peaceful European Cup, the Dutch drug gospel is starting to lose strength. Holland's world-famous "coffee shops" are facing ever more restrictions. Over the last decade their number has dropped by 40 percent. This spring the city of Rotterdam announced it would shut down all shops within a 270-yard radius of schools. In Maastricht people attending a coffee shop are obliged to leave their fingerprints, so as to prevent underage persons from buying pot.

With a socially conservative government in office since the beginning of this year, this process is only speeding up. A countrywide smoking ban (covering marijuana, too) will take effect in July 2008, likely degrading the coffee shops to mere selling counters. Last year Holland's health secretary even predicted the end of the Dutch exception. "The image of Holland as extremely tolerant toward drugs is less and less in keeping with reality," Hans Hoogervorst, who stepped down in February, told an international audience of addiction experts. "The climate in Holland has changed," adds MP Anker. "People are weary of the happy-clappy liberalism of the 1970s." (Anker's party has proposed shutting down Amsterdam's famous red-light district and converting it into a "second Montmartre," with restaurants and art galleries.)

Drug expert de Loor also thinks the end of an era is near, though he's regretting it. "The mushroom ban does not stand alone," he says. "Within 10 years not a single coffee shop will be left in Holland." Anyone craving a legal taste of the Philosopher's Stone had best make his Amsterdam vacation plans now.

© 2007