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Calls to U.S. poison centers involving psilocybin, or “magic mushrooms,” among adolescents and young adults rose sharply starting in 2019, according to a study published online Feb. 26 in the Journal of Adolescent Health.
Rita Farah, Ph.D., Pharm.D., M.P.H., from the University of Virginia School of Medicine in Charlottesville, and colleagues describe trends in psilocybin exposures among adolescents and young adults (aged 13 to 25 years) as reported to U.S. poison centers (2013 through 2022).
The researchers found that 4,055 psilocybin-involved exposures were reported. Nearly two-thirds of these exposures (65.8 percent) were single-substance exposures, most of which received medical attention (adolescents: 75.3 percent; young adults: 72.1 percent). There was no significant change seen in the number of cases from 2013 to 2018, but cases started increasing in 2019. By 2022, there was more than a tripling of cases among adolescents and more than a doubling of cases among young adults versus 2018.
“As psilocybin may become more widely available, it is important for parents to be aware that psilocybin is also available in edible forms such as chocolate and gummies,” Farah said in a statement. “And we learned from our experience with edible cannabis that young children can mistake edibles for candy.”
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