Magic mushroom chocolates found in car
Police found chocolates laced with magic mushrooms when they stopped a car driven by Steven Le Ray Ozanne.
The reclusive 47-year-old Christchurch man has now been ordered to do 150 hours of community work.
His probation officer recommended the community work sentence because it would get him out of the house instead of a home or community detention term that would keep him at home.
Ozanne suffered from anxiety and depression, the court was told at his Christchurch District Court sentencing on charges of possession of drugs and cultivating the prohibited mushrooms.
Ozanne said he had initially picked the mushrooms in a park but then started growing them from spores “in order to have a reliable source of the mushrooms”.
Police found a chilly bin in the car with a container holding 11 homemade chocolates containing the hallucinogenic mushrooms. They also found dried mushrooms which were to be used to make more chocolates, and spores to grow more of the fungi.
Defence counsel Andrew Bailey said Ozanne disputed the police claim that they had found copious amounts of mushrooms and spores. There had only been two small mushrooms and an unknown number of the tiny spores.
“Growing them is a little hit and miss,” he said. “Conditions have to be right for anything to sprout up.”
“He has had some brief contact with Hillmorton Hospital in recent times and is now receiving some medication for his medical issues which he had been dealing with by the use of the drugs he had in his possession.”
Judge Stephen O’Driscoll said Ozanne had no convictions for the last 21 years.
“The cultivation of the mushrooms is a serious matter. It carries a maximum of seven years’ jail. It is illegal and the consumption of such mushrooms can be dangerous. It can cause people to react in ways they might not otherwise do.”
Imposing the sentence, he told Ozanne: “It would not be in your interests to come back before the court on similar charges.”
Category: News
Subscribe
If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to receive more just like it.
Connect
Connect with us via: