Mystery mushroom candies raise concerns over safety and labeling

By Johnette Magner

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    SHREVEPORT, Louisiana (KTBS) — The brightly colored packaging of mushroom-infused gummies and candy bars lining convenience store shelves promises a high, but what is really inside these products remains a mystery.

With names like “Road Trip” and “Magic Mushroom Gummies,” customers might assume they contain psilocybin – the hallucinogenic compound found in illegal mushrooms – but that’s not the case.

In an investigative report, KTBS 3 News set out to discover exactly what is in these products growing in number and popularity. Their labels are vague, only mentioning “proprietary mushroom blends.” To get answers, we took them to the North Louisiana Crime Lab for analysis.

Randall Robillard, the forensic chemistry supervisor at the crime lab, confirmed while these products tout mushrooms, the lab’s tests did not detect psilocybin or its derivatives. However, Robillard noted the difficulty of determining the exact mushroom content,

“You see ‘mushroom’ on there, and you think it’s psilocin, but it turns out it’s not,” he said. “None of it says what the mushrooms are in there, and we can’t test for every single mushroom.”

Another perplexing aspect of these products is the vague and confusing labeling. Some describe their mushrooms as nootropic, a term used to describe supplements that purportedly enhance cognitive function. But that paled in comparison to the confusion created by a candy bar package that said the product was “For education purposes only. Not for consumption.”

“I’ve never seen for educational purposes only,” said North Louisiana Crime Lab Director Joey Jones. “It’s very fascinating. I hate this.”

The confusion surrounding these products grew into alarm this summer when the Food and Drug Administration recalled several mushroom-infused products by Diamond Shruumz after consumers became seriously ill after eating them. The products included microdosing chocolate bars, infused cones, and extreme gummies, both micro-dose and mega-dose.

According to the FDA warning updated Oct. 3, “175 illnesses have been reported in 33 states with 70 hospitalized.” There are also three suspected deaths.

According to the FDA, the products contained a variety of ingredients including muscimol, which comes from the Amanita Muscaria mushroom. Like psilocin and psilocybin, it is an hallucinogen. In high doses, it can also cause delirium and seizures.

In recent years, the Louisiana Legislature has been debating and passing legislation regulating candy products at convenience stores that contain THC, but they have not spent much time debating regulations around the mushroom candies, that now sit alongside the THC-infused candy.

Jones says that’s because these products are relatively new. But now that he knows about them, he says he’s going to begin talking to legislators.

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