PHOENIX (AZFamily) — The push to legalize psychedelic mushrooms in Arizona is already fueling a boom in the local black market, impacting kids & teens, and families.

While Governor Hobbs just vetoed a bipartisan effort to open therapeutic clinics for psilocybin mushrooms in Arizona, there’s still a push to get an initiative on the November ballot.

And already, Valley Drug Task Force detectives are seeing a massive spike in illegal sales & labs, with dealers aggressively targeting teens on social media. Scrolling Snap Chat, it’s easy to find flashy reels for psychedelic mushrooms. Drug dealers posting price charts & QR codes for illegal psilocybin shrooms & edibles delivered to your door.

Narcotics detectives are busting more labs in residential neighborhoods. All over the valley and state, they’re finding homes and apartments with rooms full of mushrooms in every stage of the growing process. From the spores, sold legally online, to mason jars and plastic tubs and bags of mushroom stalks, psilocybin powder, capsules, edibles, and infused chocolate bars in every flavor imaginable, the mushrooms are in every stage of the growing process.

Caught In The Act

A Valley father who didn’t want to be named since his 15-year-old son is still in rehab, and the suspects who supplied the dealer who sold to him are now behind bars on felony charges.

“We caught a drug dealer bringing drugs to our son’s bedroom window,” he said.

He set up home surveillance cameras and, within 48 hours, caught a shot of a dealer making a delivery to their home, his girlfriend, walking drugs right up their driveway, passing them through his son’s window. He says local police told them there was nothing they could do, even though he had that footage and the dealer’s social media handle and messages.

The father got in touch with the High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas (HIDTA) regional drug taskforce, and those detectives were able to track down that dealer. “There was a very large drug bust and weapons seizure related to the information I provided,” he said.

It turns out that detectives say another young teen helped them lock up three suspects higher up the supply chain. That dad says he tried just about everything to help his son when he started using marijuana his freshman year. In addition to monitoring his social media & setting up those security cameras, they also started drug testing him. That’s when he says his son switched to mushrooms, knowing it wouldn’t show on the home drug test.

He found a picture on his son’s cell phone of him holding a bag of mushrooms he bought off social media the night he ate them and had a bad trip at a high school football game.

“That put him into a psychotic episode,” he said. Friends were holding his son down in the stands & some cheerleaders flagged their coach, who got paramedics to check him out. When the Dad got the call, he rushed to campus and said his son was in another world in the back of the ambulance and didn’t even recognize him. “Blue and red lights are flashing everywhere, there’s a crowd, yeah, it was very disturbing,” he said.

Even after being admitted to the E-R, he says it took hours for his son to return to reality. “It took a very long time. He had to have multiple doses of anti-psychotics,“ the Dad said.

An ‘explosion’ of Illegal Psilocybin on Valley streets

Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office Detective Matt Shay with the HIDTA task force says he feels for this father & while he’s glad to have had a hand in stopping that one dealer, he’s frustrated there are so many more preying on kids online, with terrifying outcomes just like this.

“We hear about it all the time. We see it all the time,” Shay said. His squad is tracking a recent explosion of illegal psilocybin on our local streets. “Not just one pound, 10 pounds, 15 pounds, 20 pounds at a time of mushrooms, it’s crazy,” Shay said. He says just as legalizing marijuana multiplied black market pot sales in Arizona tenfold, detectives are now seeing a precursor push of psilocybin mushrooms flooding the valley as lobbyists push to legalize psychedelics, and street dealers are specifically targeting kids & teens.

“It rewires the brain and that’s not something we should be doing to our kids that are 16, 17, 18 years old, 14 years old, 12 years old. We’re seeing it,” Shay said.

There have been countless cases of tragedies, close calls & bad trips from psychedelic hallucinations. “There are a million stories online,” Shay said.

Sky ‘High’

Eight months ago, a former Alaska Airlines pilot tried killing the engines mid-flight, convinced he was having a bad dream and it would wake him up. It’s a serious and common problem with recreational self-dosing. The label on one edible package in the Valley said, ‘If you’re still figuring out your dosing, start with 1-2 pieces; if there are no effects after an hour, have another.’ “Hmm, I must not have had enough; I’ll eat more, I’ll eat more, and next thing you know, everything hits at once, and BAM, now you freak out at a football game,” said Detective Shay.

Dr. Sue Sisley runs Scottsdale Research Institute, the only lab in the country cleared by the feds to grow psilocybin mushrooms- not synthetics. “It’s kind of like Russian Roulette,” Dr. Sisley said.

“These mushrooms are not to be played with, and they can take you into some very dark rabbit holes,” Sisley said.

We’ve previously profiled Arizona veterans with PTSD who say in a well-regulated set & setting; these so-called magic mushrooms are lifesaving medicine. Dr. Sisley has a wait list of patients with PTSD and other chronic conditions, like depression & anxiety, eager to be part of the first clinical trial in the world, right here in Scottsdale.

“They can be a wonderful medicine, or they can cause very severe side effects,” she said. Her trial findings for safe dosing standards could take another year. It’s one reason the governor vetoed SB-1570, which would have required the state to start licensing psilocybin clinics to treat people across Arizona without requiring proof of diagnosis for any medical condition first.

“We need to start with the science,” said Dr. Sisley.

Toxic Mold Concerns

While Sisley’s lab takes precautions to prevent those dangers, detectives say the illegal home grows they’re busting are covered in it & there are no regulations in place to protect the next family that moves into that apartment or house. But when it comes to meth labs, for instance, it’s state law for law enforcement to notify landlords & property owners immediately after any bust. Owners must bring in certified remediation cleaners to ensure the area is safe before it’s cleared to reoccupy.

Hidden harm on top of another threat: guns, seized in nearly every bust. “They’re meeting people they don’t know to sell a product that’s illegal,” said Detective Shay. And it’s all coming into your neighborhood, summoned by teens buying drugs off social media.

“Kids hear that it’s legal somewhere, so they think it’s okay,” says the dad, who tells us his No.1 focus now is getting his son sober. He says residential rehabs already run more than $150,000 out of pocket after insurance. However, the greater cost is not knowing if or when a flashback of that bad psychedelic trip will derail him down the road. “The damage it’s doing is immeasurable,” he said.

Psilocybin mushrooms are already legal in Colorado and Oregon. Supporters trying to get this on the Arizona ballot in November need to collect at least 255,949 valid signatures by July 3rd. It’s unclear where they stand on those efforts.

LIVE Q&A

Editor’s Note: Join Nicole Crites and Dr. Sue Sisley for a live Q&A on YouTube and Facebook at 7 pm Tuesday, June 25th. We have opened the chat on both platforms to allow anyone to post questions about this story prior to the live event.

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