Oxford judge's magic mushroom warning as Bicester dealer spared

Recorder Samantha Presland told barristers at Oxford Crown Court that she had read countless articles in broadsheet newspapers about the benefits of magic mushrooms.

But she added: “At no point in any of these articles does it point out that it is a class A drug, which puts it in the same sentencing category as cocaine, which is abhorrent – utterly abhorrent – as a drug, and heroin, which we know ravages people from the inside out and everybody around them.”

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Anyone tempted by a ‘nice article’ into organising a cocktail party at which ‘shrooms’ were taken should remember they could be looking down the ‘barrel’ of a 14 year jail sentence for playing a leading role in dealing drugs, she said. The judge had specifically asked the Oxford Mail to cover the case, noting the importance of deterring others from mistakenly dealing the class A drug.

Her comments came as she dealt with 26-year-old Brandon Ison, whose phone revealed he was dealing magic mushrooms over a five month period in 2021.

He was the passenger in a car that was pulled over in Bicester in the early hours of August 7, 2021, after it was seen being driven erratically.

He was searched and found to be in possession of a small amount of cannabis, while further investigations showed he had 101g of mushrooms worth around £1,000 on the street.

Messages on his mobile phone revealed he had been dealing the drugs on a small-scale between February 11 and July 9.

In one message, he asked an associate: “Ever had magic mushrooms? I got a fat import the other day.”

Other messages contained a price list, detailing 7g could be bought for £70 or twice that weight – half an ounce – for £100.

Interviewed by the police, he said he had been going to a friends house to celebrate a birthday when he was stopped. He denied intending to supply the drugs for money.

Ison, of Crown Road, Sutton, pleaded guilty at the magistrates’ court to possession with intent to supply a class A drug and personal possession of class B drug cannabis. He had no previous convictions.

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Mitigating, George Joseph told the court that when he had been briefed in the case the night before and saw it concerned class A drugs, he had thought he would be dealing with a heroin or crack cocaine supplier.

He admitted he ‘fell prey’ to a similar misconception as his client that magic mushrooms were not a class A drug.

The judge acknowledged the difference in people’s minds between the misery associated with heroin and crack cocaine, ‘whereas people getting high and laughing their heads off in a field isn’t really a problem’.

But she said the public needed to be aware there was ‘no distinction’ in law between the different class A drugs.

The law changed in 2005, when magic mushrooms were classified as a class A drug illegal to either supply or possess. The only exceptions were for unwitting landowners on whose land the illegal mushrooms were growing ‘uncultivated’ and those who had picked the ‘shrooms’ in order to hand-over to a police officer or someone authorised to take them.

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On Monday, Recorder Presland said: “From a deterrence point of view, people need to understand just because in the Times and Telegraph and Sunday Times there is a nice article about [taking mushrooms at a] cocktail party, it’s a class A and anyone running said event is liable to be put in a leading role and is looking at the barrel of a starting point of 14 years.”

Noting the prosecution’s acceptance that Ison was only playing a lesser role in supplying the drug, had no previous convictions and had waited more than two years for his case to reach court, she suspended his 16 month prison sentence for a year-and-a-half.

Ison, who works six days a week in a restaurant, must do 120 hours of unpaid work for the benefit of the community.