By DEBORAH JONES/DUNCAN, British Columbia

 

    It's magic mushroom time in the Cowichan Valley, and hundreds of pickers have arrived for their yearly invasion of farmers' fields near this Vancouver Island community.

 

    The pickers, who come from across Canada in the hopes of making huge profits when they sell their harvest on the drug markets of British Columbia, offer sad stories, money or a percentage of the profits to farmers for written permission to pluck psilocybin mushrooms from the cow manure in which they grow.

 

    Although psilocybin is clinically classified with such halucinogenic illegal drugs as LSD and MDA, possession it is not illegal when in the whole mushroom form. Since the drug first became widely popular five years ago, mushroom pickers have come in increasing numbers to the West Coast to pick up magical profits - a pound of crushed and dried magic mushrooms will yield up to $7,000, they tell local farmers.

 

    To combat the wave of pickers - who police say swell local welfare rolls, break down pasture fences so livestock escape and cause an increase in shoplifting - the provincial Government put new teeth in trespass laws this year.

 

    RCMP can now arrest anyone who is in a fenced area without the owner's permission as well as anyone who they believe recently left the property. The fenced area must be clearly posted with No Trespassing signs at each normal entrance. Previously the land had to be posted with No Trespassing signs each 100 metres and a policeman had to see the suspects enter the property before he could make an arrest.

 

    The new legislation is welcomed by dairy farmer Louise Judge, who complains her fields are sometimes dotted with 100 pickers "who never, never use the gate. Last year we had to replace 22 posts." Mrs. Judge says this year more of the pickers are asking for permission to pick her fields, which they tell her have the best mushrooms in the area because of manure from the Judge dairy herd.

 

    Some of them are smooth talkers. "One kid was telling me he needs the money to go to university," she said. "A kid from Saskatchewan said he sells the mushrooms for $7,000 a pound and a Quebecker said if we gave him exclusives (to our pasture) he would beat up anyone else who came. And we heard that one guy offered a farmer $10,000 for exclusive rights." The Judges always refuse permission because they believe selling the drug is wrong. "Besides the fences, we don't like what it does to the kids," Mrs. Judge said. "Once they're on it (psilocybin) they go on to heroin and then there's no hope." She believes most other farmers in the area deny entry to mushroom seekers. "I would say farming people are family people, but I suppose some could be lining their pockets with it." Despite refusal of permission and the threat of the Trespass Act many of the pickers on the Judge farm don't seem to be concerned. "When I get up in the morning there are always mushroom pickers out there," Mrs. Judge said, gesturing to a far field where four people could be seen crouched among the grass and cow manure searching for flat, black fungi.

 

    She described most of the pickers as those "who were probably kids during the 60s. They're the ones you see with ponytails on the street." And some of them are mean-looking characters, she added. "Let's put it this way - the police send big officers." But she is not afraid of them. "We have a very large bull," she said with a grin.

 

    A Duncan RCMP drug division constable called magic mushrooms "the new drug of abuse. They grow overnight and the only way to get rid of them is with a couple of heavy frosts or flooding. Some days you drive past a field here and it's wall-to-wall pickers." Duncan Mounties have plucked 30 pickers from fields since the season began last week and charged them under the Trespass Act. Eight have pleaded guilty in Provincial Court and have received penalties ranging from $100 to five days in jail. The maximum penalty for trespassing is a $500 fine or six months in jail.

 

    Magic mushrooms "are related closely to the supermarket mushroom," said Dr. John Paden, a fungus specialist at the University of Victoria. The mushrooms grow from spores in late September and through October after the fall rains and "you're supposed to get a mental trip from eating four or five of them." The drug is similar to LSD, Dr. Paden said, and gives a user "visions, geometric patterns and colors." The mushrooms grow throughout the Cowichan Valley, at the Vancouver Airport and on the Queen Charlotte Islands.