A recent report from researchers at Oregon State University sent shockwaves through the media landscape: Out of 12 products purported to be ‘Magic Mushroom Edibles’ purchased at various retailers throughout the city, not a single one contained psilocybin. 

This report was published in the JAMA Network open access medical journal on September 11, and within a week the story was picked up by outlets like Scientific American, Forbes, NPR, and many other major publications which detailed the alarming reality of the unregulated market for psychedelic consumer packaged goods. 

The story serves as a stark example of the psychedelic zeitgeist in the United States at present, where years of clinical research and media amplification of the perceived mental health benefits of psychedelics meet the daily reality of free market economics and consumer culture. 

If this were breaking news, it would certainly be more interesting – but in fact this same type of study and story has already been published on at least four distinct and separate occasions over the last two years.

Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya/pexels.com. Photo for illustrative purposes only.

In a report published in February of 2024, 24 edibles marketed as ‘Magic Mushroom Chocolate Bars’ were purchased across California’s Bay Area and submitted for analytical testing to Hyphae Labs in California. The study revealed that nearly 1 in 3 of these products contained no psilocybin and instead had research chemicals like 4-AcO-DMT – a prodrug of psilocin, one of the main active alkaloids in psilocybin mushrooms. 

In June of 2024, the Diamond Shruumz fiasco swept the media after the CDC announced a recall and investigation into a ‘microdosing’ product that allegedly hospitalized up to 180 people with 3 potentially associated deaths. Dozens of major outlets from CBS to Newsweek to Fox ran this story and amplified the dangers of adulterated and ambiguously legal ‘gas station psychedelic’ products. 

In August of 2024, The Los Angeles Times ran another identical story finding that 33 samples of products advertised as being ‘magic mushroom edibles’ purchased at various locations between Los Angeles and San Diego did not contain psilocybin in 40% of the products tested. 

Yet in the nineteen month timeframe between these four separate and largely identical stories, psilocybin use has continued to rise dramatically as it has consistently since at least 2018 when Michael Pollan exalted his own personal psilocybin mushroom experience in the #1 New York Times Bestselling book How To Change Your Mind.

According to a report published in the Annals of Internal Medicine journal in April of 2025 and picked up by Science Daily, lifetime use of psilocybin had reached 12.1% of the U.S. population by 2023 – over 31 million people. A quick survey of the cultural landscape on TikTok – which has a reported 170 million users based in the U.S. – will show that the mainstream popularity of psilocybin mushrooms is more of an entrenched reality than an intriguing trend. 

Photo by DANIEL BLAJ/pexels.com Photo is for illustrative use only.

Which begs the question: If the magic mushroom edible landscape is so saturated with mislabeled and misleading products filled with unknown and potentially dangerous ingredients, then why is population wide use continuing to surge regardless of these adulterated product discovery studies, lack of safety regulations, and prohibition? 

I would argue that it’s the exception rather than the rule that people buy their drugs from unknown sources. Have any of the researchers or publication teams conducting and circulating these survey results considered joining one of the hundreds of different psychedelic community organizations that exist in the United States?

Global Psychedelic Society lists 126 active Psychedelic Society chapters in the United States, with hubs located in even the deepest parts of the Bible Belt like Alabama as well as prohibitionist strongholds like Indiana, Louisiana, Arkansas and Missouri. There are societies listed in 33 states as well as D.C. and Puerto Rico. These types of community organizations serve as invaluable resources for education and awareness around best practices in regard to psychedelics, which implicitly extends to safe sourcing via the development of strong community networks and increased awareness of the psychedelic landscape. 

Popup events such as those hosted by District216 and the Entheogen Expo in various cities across the country are known to draw hundreds or even 1000 plus people at a time, and serve as opportunities to build rapport and a sense of psychedelic community. 

Beyond psychedelic community chapters, there are an estimated 500 psychedelic churches in the United States that also serve as an access point for psychedelic ‘sacraments’, as the substances are often characterized in church parlance. The largest of these churches has upwards of 120,000 members. There have been zero reports of adulterated substances among any of these church congregations relevant to the discussion around ‘gas station gummies’ or ‘adulterated chocolates’. 

There were also hundreds of different psychedelic events and conferences from coast to coast this year, ranging from the 8,000 person plus Psychedelic Science conference in Denver to community meet ups in coffee shops and numerous well-publicized in-person convenings in between.  

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Beyond these formally established psychedelic communities, churches, and conferences, organizations like PsiloSafe set the standards for underground product safety by providing third party verified lab testing and labeling accuracy for products. 

Shroomski in Colorado also has a ‘Shroomski Certified’ designation that requires products to be laboratory tested and analyzed with results amplified to the public.

I have previously written about the booming market for underground psychedelic consumer packaged goods and the legitimacy and established credibility of brands like NeauTropics and Boom Bars among many others. These quality underground products also extend to MDMA gummies and DMT vaporizer pens via internationally renowned brands like Entheo*.

Beyond community venues and product certification, there are numerous reputable vendors of psilocybin mushroom spores that are legally commercially available thanks to the fact that the spores themselves don’t actually contain any psilocybin. Inoculate The World is an example of a premium spore vendor who also features extensive educational resources on how to cultivate your own psychedelic research materials. Mainstream celebrities have even gotten in on the turnkey psilocybin mushroom grow bag action as evidenced by former heavyweight champion boxer Mike Tyson’s branded collaboration with Advanced Mycology. 

In all of these cases, peer to peer connections and community rapport replace the need for arbitrary sourcing. While this doesn’t negate the fact that so many mislabeled and misleading products exist on the ‘grey market’ or underground at large, it does provide a bankable and reliable alternative to random and arbitrary sourcing. The fact that this same study and survey has been repeated and amplified by the nation’s largest media platforms when the solution to this pandemonium already exists in plain view suggests that researchers and publicity oriented ‘If It Bleeds It Leads’ media peddlers are primarily interested in amplifying or exacerbating the problem without promoting sensible solutions to it. 

Amanita muscaria

The true issue underlying the pandemonium around adulterated products that we’ve seen amplified numerous times in recent years is the blind spectre of prohibition and the erosion of community. The criminalization of various substances – especially natural compounds with millennia of human use behind them, exacerbates the unpredictability of the market as supply and demand are routed through a potentially infinite number of side channels with various analogues and permutations of illicit compounds so as to reduce legal liability. If a booming demand exists for a product and that product is categorized as a Schedule One substance by the state, manufacturers are inherently disincentivized from being forthright about what’s actually in their product and whether or not it has been analytically tested. 

Beyond this, the idea that the majority of people are incapable of doing their own due diligence about what they’re putting in their bodies is a sad commentary on the state of American consumer culture at large. The FDA under this current administration has made damning allegations against even the most household over the counter pharmaceutical brands such as the recent public warning about the potential dangers of Tylenol or the ban on artificial dyes in food and drink after decades of their ubiquitous inclusion in countless products. 

Between prohibition and the evolving possibility of a state-regulated psychedelic landscape, there is a middle ground that exists in which community access models expedite access to these compounds and provide guardrails against the anonymous marketplace. To see a historical precedent for this type of mixed-use model in the United States, one can revisit the 19th Century when patents were issued for psychoactive pharmaceuticals like the opium-based ‘laudanum’ while opium itself remained legal for use until its criminalization in 1909. As such, it is possible to be “pro-regulation and anti-criminalization’ of substances. 

Sourcing your substances from people you know and communities you are a part of has not been part of the conversation around these recent studies and the media hyperbole propelling them into a moral panic. Faceless and anonymous transactions around illicit compounds largely exist due to prohibition, and a robust community access model widely exists in spite of the status quo. Although it would benefit a number of corporate and government interests if the entire underground supply was contaminated and the marketplace was uniquely composed of bad actors, the truth of the matter is that this is the exception rather than the rule. 

Dennis Walker is a global mushroom industry consultant and avid traveler. He is the founder of Mycopreneur, a platform dedicated to advancing the mushroom entrepreneurial ecosystem. His work has been featured in Rolling Stone. Forbes, Wired, Vice, High Times, and many other outlets. He is also the founder of Mycoday mushroom chocolate, an adaptogenic mushroom chocolate brand.