In May, the Mile-High City proved it’s still leading the charge against prohibition, even in less-well-trodden, perhaps even taboo, spaces.

Though Denver’s vote to decriminalize the use of magic mushrooms for anyone 21 and over only passed by a hair, residents in one of the first canna-friendly cities south of the border no longer have to worry about serving jail time for owning or using psilocybin mushrooms.

City police have been told to “deprioritize to the greatest extent possible” charging Denverites for interacting with the fungus.

What are magic mushrooms, and what do they do?

Mushrooms that contain the naturally occurring compound psilocybin are often referred to as magic mushrooms for their hallucinogenic effect on the human brain when consumed. They’re capable of producing a number of sensory and emotional changes, ranging from an enhanced perception of sights, sounds, sensations and an influx of positive feelings (the proverbial “good trip”) to a heightened, negative sensitivity to the very same elements (the “bad trip”). Their usage is said to date back to more than 9,000 years ago, and the mushrooms have seen use throughout many indigenous cultures for their purported medicinal and spiritual properties. In recent years, they’ve been subject to an increasing research for their potential benefits to human mental health.

Denver’s revelation comes off the relatively hot heels of the U.S. Food & Drug Administration recognizing psilocybin to be a breakthrough therapy for symptoms of depression. It’s also proven useful in treating forms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and increasing mindfulness and general well-being under certain conditions.

“The filters that constrain our perceptions open up, and that’s what needs to happen when we’re depressed or facing internal anxieties,” says Mark Haden, an adjunct professor in the School of Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia, and executive director of Canada’s Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS Canada). Prohibitionist attitudes are “melting”, Haden says, as studies centered on the mushroom reveal uses beyond what he regards as fear-mongering of the past.

He attributes much of the resulting positive mood around magic mushrooms to a flood of “interconnectivity” between certain brain regions, best exemplified by an image published in 2014 by a peer-reviewed scientific journal. The image on the left uses arcing lines to depict connections between different regions in the brain before consuming psilocybin, and the right shows the more plentiful connections afterwards. Haden describes the reasoning behind these connections as still being murky, but proposes that the upshot in connectivity may help consumers see the potential for “more choices” in how they approach daily struggles.

What’s the deal in Canada?

An influencer and educator in many cannabis spaces, so-called Marijuana Maven Irie Selkirk is also a patient advocate for psychedelic therapies.

“There is overwhelming data that psilocybin and psychedelic therapies will have an enormous impact on wellness, especially in the realm of mental health, which is becoming more and more of a challenge to maintain as each day passes,” Selkirk argues.

She works with doctors and patients to study the effects of psilocybin on treatment-resistant depression and for mood enhancement, pushing for the legalization of said therapies. “A single dose of psilocybin has the potential to help treatment-resistant depression,” she argues, citing studies that show “the positive effects of a psychedelic therapy session can last up to six months in improving mood and overall mental well-being.”

Geoffroy Legault-Thivierge, a media relations officer at Health Canada, says that psilocybin mushrooms are controlled under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. This puts them in the same class of psychedelic untouchables as LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) and mescaline (found in the peyote cactus), and one class below where cannabis used to be.

“[Psilocybin], along with its salts, is controlled under Schedule III of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act,” says Legault-Thivierge. “Anyone not otherwise authorized by the act who possesses or seeks to obtain magic mushrooms would be in contravention of the act,” he says.

In Canada, possessing, selling or transporting psilocybin mushrooms without a prescription or licence is an indictable offence with the possibility of up to three years in prison, should a court so choose. Cultivation, however, is in a legal grey area: While it’s technically illegal to manufacture the psychedelic compound without a licence, “it is legal to obtain spores, and the wild mushrooms themselves are also not illegal,” notes Selkirk, reporting that it’s only the compounds psilocybin and psilocin that are illegal to possess, obtain or produce without a prescription or licence.

Illegal, but rarely enforced

Though the rules are defined, the appetite for enforcing them may not be there. “In my 47 years as a [defence] lawyer, I don’t think I’ve had more than maybe a dozen instances of psilocybin mushroom possession or possession for the purpose of trafficking,” says John Conroy, a veteran attorney who specializes in cannabis cases. Conroy says that when they have come up, they’ve almost always been following the search of a house, vehicle or person suspected of pot possession, essentially making their discovery incidental.

When Conroy probed his network of legal contacts for psilocybin cases, he reports only two attorneys had experienced any instances of arrest for magic mushrooms, both citing single, separate situations in which the defendant had been searched for cannabis.

No plans to follow Mile High’s lead

There’s no plan to decriminalize the plant and its mind-altering compounds any time soon, Legault-Thivierge says. He mentions, however, that its medical potential seems to be gaining clout. “Health Canada issued a ‘No Objection’ letter to a clinical trial in July 2018,” he says, adding that health authorities gave a pass to The Safety and Efficacy of Psilocybin in Participants with Treatment-Resistant Depression, which is expected to be completed by April 2020.

An email response from Health Canada’s Office of Controlled Substances also suggested the federal stance could change as information surrounding the plant sprouts up. “The status of a substance under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act is a point-in-time confirmation,” it noted. “And they may change as a result of new information.”