Florida halts sales of Amanita Muscaria at US’s only brick-and-mortar retailer

Earlier this week, Leafly reported on a series of police raids on illegal mushroom traders in the US and Canada. In the story, we highlighted Chillum, a hemp-derived products retailer in Tampa, Florida, as an exception to the rule. Since September, the store has been legally selling Amanita muscaria — also known as fly agaric — to adults.

But it seems we spoke too soon.

On December 7, Chillum owner and founder Carlos Jose Angel Hermida posted a note on the store’s website that read, “What happened to the shrooms, man?” In the blog post, Hermida announced that the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services has stopped selling their Amanita products, which include jelly beans, mushroom powder, and microdose capsules. Chillum sources these products from a manufacturer called PsiloMart.

Amanita muscaria mushrooms do not contain psilocybin but instead contain a psychoactive compound called muscimol. Federal laws do not prohibit muscimol, and Louisiana remains the only state to have banned its sale.

But as Hemida noted, the idea of ​​selling amanita specifically for consumption provoked much more legal skepticism from Florida state officials.

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As Hermida wrote on the store’s blog, the state’s move to halt the sale of amanita hinged on a single word: the store encouraged customers to “consume” the mushrooms. However, since the FDA has not approved Amanita as an edible food, state officials reportedly argued that chillum could no longer sell it as such.

Officials with the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services did not respond to a request for comment about this story.

When asked for comment on a rainy Florida afternoon, Hermida told Leafly he thinks he would have been clear if he had been selling the mind-altering mushroom products solely for “educational” or “spiritual” purposes.

“It’s our fault,” he said. “We should never have told people to consume it.”

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Hermida also pointed out that he didn’t suffer a dramatic assault. In fact, he commended the state officials who called for the ban on sales, noting that Chillum was already under their jurisdiction.

“They inspected us because that’s exactly what they’re supposed to do,” he explained.

Also, state officials did not confiscate any Chillum products. They simply took down his inventory and told him not to sell any of it. After some back-and-forth, they even approved Hermida to sell back stock to PsiloMart.

“It could have been a lot worse,” Hermida said, laughing.

Is Amanita muscaria safe to eat?

Hermida said he believes Amanita products remain safe to consume. Researchers believe the raw mushrooms are poisonous, and consumers should be cautioned against picking and consuming them in their unprocessed state.

Manufacturers must properly detoxify amanitas to make them safe for consumption.

The Saami of what is now Scandinavia found a novel way to do this: They fed the mushrooms to reindeer and then consumed their psychoactive and detoxified urine.

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“We at Chillum disagree that it’s a poison,” Hermida told Leafly.

Drew Gennuso, the CEO of PsiloMart, acknowledged that his company’s mushrooms may not meet the same testing standards as hemp or cannabis. However, he said they are still safe to consume.

Gennuso explained that compounds like heavy metals can sometimes show up in the fungi’s lab results, but only because the fungi pick them up from the soil when growing in the wild. “They’re in the ground, of course, but that doesn’t mean they’re necessarily bad for you,” he told Leafly. “I don’t think it takes much to be considered toxic.”

What is Chillum’s next step?

Hermida, for example, isn’t giving up on his mushroom entrepreneurship dreams. He plans to launch an entirely separate company called Learneuphoria, an online education platform. He explained that it will offer users online courses on a range of psychedelics. It will also allow interested parties to purchase Amanitas, but for educational purposes only.

“We’ve been developing it for a while. What is most needed in this industry is education. What is happening with the Florida Department of Agriculture really shows that there is a tremendous need for education,” he said.

As for PsiloMart’s Gennuso, he sees the halt to sales as unfortunate, but also as a valuable and insightful insight into how states will regulate Amanitas.

“We welcome regulations. We want to know what the parameters are. Since Chillum was the first pharmacy to really step out and offer this type of product, it came at some point that we got some clarification [regarding if amanita] are considered consumables and how they need to be marketed.”

“Until you get an order,” Gennuso added, “you don’t know what needs to be corrected.”