A third of Canadian cities have magic mushroom dispensaries: study

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Most Canadian psilocybin dispensaries offer online sales while making unsubstantiated health claims and omitting important risks, according to a new study sounding the alarm about the psychedelic compound found in magic mushrooms.

The study, published Tuesday in the medical journal JAMA Network Open, identified 57 storefront dispensaries across Canada that were operating last May. Fifty of those had websites and offered delivery.

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“This cross-sectional study found that unlicensed psilocybin dispensaries are currently present in 35.7 per cent of cities in Canada,” it concludes.

“Most dispensaries are part of organized chains with access to online ordering and delivery and processed psilocybin-infused edible products (e.g. candies and chocolates). Dispensaries made a wide variety of health claims about the benefits of psilocybin use, which remain unsupported by current scientific evidence. There is a need to continue monitoring the growth of the emerging unlicensed psilocybin market, alongside related product use and outcomes.”

Canadian psilocybin dispensaries “made a variety of unverified health claims and lacked warnings of potential harms, suggesting the need for greater regulatory measures to protect the public,” said the study.

One of the authors, Dr. Daniel Myran, pointed out Tuesday that the 2023 Canadian Substance Use Survey found that an estimated 5.9 per cent of Canadians had tried a hallucinogen in the past year, and that number jumped to 13.2 per cent among young adults between the ages of 20 and 24.

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“I just found it really, really interesting that you walk around Ottawa, and I travel to Toronto regularly, and you see all sorts of dispensaries that are open,” said Myran, who holds the Canada Research Chair in Social Accountability at the University of Ottawa, where he also teaches family medicine.

While psilocybin is a controlled substance that can’t be sold here legally, “it’s interesting to see that retail market cropping up,” he said. “I do a lot of cannabis research and it’s very reminiscent of what was happening with non-medical, grey market dispensaries in the lead-up to legalization.”

To get a handle on what products psilocybin dispensaries were selling and what health claims they were making, Myran had his students scour websites for the 50 storefronts identified last spring.

“I had some very clever, hard-working students who did this as a summer project,” he said.

Dispensaries made a wide range of health claims about psilocybin, Myran said.

“Many are about mental health, so it’s talking about potential improvements in anxiety or depression, or substance use disorders or symptoms of (post-traumatic stress disorder). Then you move on into other areas like boosting creativity or improving focus. And, to us, what was really relevant as we reviewed them, is in most of the cases, the health claims were not accurate.”

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Some overstate evidence from drug trials, he said.

“Or it’s inaccurate in that almost all of the trials have paired psychedelic use with therapy.”

Studies that have shown improvement in treatment-resistant depression, for example, are conducted “in a very controlled setting with talk therapy and a specific mood with ambience — there are things that have gone into setting that up so it’s therapeutic. And that’s not what’s being presented most of the time on the websites. It’s more of the notion that you can use this recreationally and it will have substantial mental health benefits,” said Myran, who is also an investigator with the Bruyère Health Research Institute.

There’s “very little data about what some of the health impacts or adverse events of psilocybin use might be,” he said.

“For example, is it safe to use during pregnancy? You have very few studies that are decades out of date.”

Few of the psilocybin dispensary websites “commented on the risk of mania or psychosis or schizophrenia, which are actually the areas for which there’s more evidence that there’s a potential risk,” Myran said. “There’s sufficient evidence there that most trials are excluding people with a history of mania or psychosis because they’re concerned about that being precipitated or brought on by use of the substances.”

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Most Canadians who try psilocybin are getting their products from dispensary storefronts or online sellers, he said. “The concern would be if this is the main source of information that people are getting it may be an incomplete picture of both the potential health benefits that people expect to receive and possible adverse events.”

Ontario topped the study’s list of provinces with the most psilocybin dispensaries, with 38 storefronts, 18 of them in Toronto’s census metropolitan area. British Columbia came second, with 17 storefronts, mostly in the Vancouver area.

“Across the country, 815,628 individuals … were within (one kilometre) of a psilocybin dispensary,” said the study.

There’s been “a large increase in the number of stores,” since the study was conducted last year, Myran said.

Researchers went into the project assuming most of the psilocybin dispensaries would be “one-off, low-level stores,” he said. “We actually found that there was quite a high degree of sophistication and centralization where it seems like many of these are being run by chains.”

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Psilocybin is an illegal substance under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act (CDSA), Nadine Ramadan, who speaks for the Toronto Police Service, said Tuesday in an email.

“Anyone selling or producing psilocybin would require an exemption from Health Canada, and without that, would be committing an offence and could be subject to charges under the CDSA,” Ramadan said.

“When a report is made to Toronto Police about an illegal dispensary, it is investigated, and any decision to proceed with charges is based on the findings of that investigation. We also work with the city, as brick and mortar shops could also be subject to bylaw, permit and zoning infractions.”

But, “in terms of priorities, enforcement by TPS is largely focused on the trafficking of illegal drugs that are resulting in overdose deaths and having a traumatic and devastating impact on our communities,” Ramadan said.

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