Over the last years many smart shops where established in different Dutch cities. New outlets for new drugs attracting loads of European tourists. The main smart drug is the magic mushroom, but there is a possibility that the Dutch higher court will pronounce a sentence on the status of magic mushrooms and a possible ban in The Netherlands this month.
The Paddo is the collective name popularised in the Netherlands and Flanders during the 1990s for the psilocybin and psilocin-containing mushroom species, which naturally contain substances mainly known for their hallucinogenic and also psychedelic effects. Other, internationally known nicknames are psilo, shroom and magic mushroom. Hallucinogenic mushrooms occur in the wild in large parts of the world. Also in the Netherlands, dozens of species classified under magic mushrooms occur in the wild.
The substances psilocybin and psilocin in the paddo’s are forbidden, but at the moment the possession and sales of fresh paddo’s is tolerated in the Netherlands. Different varieties of magic mushrooms are cultivated industrially in the Netherlands and sold throughout the country in the numerous smart shops. Any processing or drying of magic mushrooms makes the drug illegal.
for the program Europamagazin editor-in-chief Rolf Dieter Krause from the Brussels bureau from the first German public TV channel ARD travels to the Netherlands for filming for a background reportage. He films at a paddo farm near Amsterdam and interviews the cultivators, interviews a drug prevention specialist from the national Dutch knowledge institute for mental health and addiction and Dutch paddo specialist Arno Adelaars takes him into the Dutch forests to find magic mushrooms in the wild.
For this background reportage Featurez gave advice, did the research, setup and planning, and accompanied the filming.