When shadowy, out-of-state interests bankrolled the legalization of “magic mushrooms” – i.e., dangerous hallucinogens – on Colorado’s statewide ballot last year, they pitched it to voters as a form of therapy. Their snake oil was peddled to the public as a treatment for depression, PTSD and other psychological and emotional disorders. The proposal passed.

What Prop. 122’s backers didn’t mention was that magic mushrooms also could prompt a veteran airline pilot with a spotless record to suddenly cut off fuel to the engines on a plane full of passengers at 30,000 feet. As the world now knows, that’s what happened on a flight this week from Everett, Wash., to San Francisco. Only the quick actions of the cockpit crew, restoring the fuel flow to Alaska Airlines Flight 2059, saved 84 passengers from certain doom.

As global news outlets reported in the aftermath of the near-disaster, the pilot – who was off duty at the time and was hitching a ride in the cockpit as permitted by airline regulations – had to be overpowered and dragged out. It could have been a scene in a movie had it not been terrifying real life.

As CNN reported Wednesday, it turns out the pilot told investigators he had ingested magic mushrooms 48 hours earlier, had been awake for 40 hours after that – and thought he was dreaming when he pulled the handles of a fire-extinguishing system that cut off fuel. He believed doing so would cause him to “wake up.”

Keep that nightmare in mind as you ponder some disturbing news from the State Capitol right here in Colorado. It seems candy, gummies and other edibles laced with now-legal magic mushrooms could be approved by state regulators for use in our state as early as next year.

That’s right, even as parents are still reeling from the new normal of searching their middle-schoolers’ backpacks for high-potency-pot-infused edibles and concentrates – being a parent just got harder. Again.

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Now, they’ll have to make sure their kids don’t consume – knowingly or otherwise – legal hallucinogens like psilocybin and mescaline. Apparently, mom and dad don’t have enough to worry about. They can add to the list ensuring their kids don’t walk into the middle of a busy street amid a psychedelic trip or perhaps sprout wings and jump out a window.

Prop. 122 technically doesn’t allow retail sales. It will be dispensed by “facilitators” at “healing centers” licensed by the state – which will be paid for their services. Also permitted is growing mushrooms, for (wink!) personal use. A grower can “give” the product to others so long as it’s not “sold.” It’s all an unenforceable farce. Money will change hands just as it does for any dangerous street drug.

Meanwhile, the state Department of Revenue’s “Natural Medicine Division” – newly created by the legislature under Prop. 122 to gin up the details of hallucinogen regulation – reportedly made clear at a meeting earlier this month that magic mushroom edibles are on the table. Presumably, they’ll be dispensed by the facilitators in the course of “treatment.”

It’s likely a lot of voters saw through the magic mushrooms initiative and its bogus claims of therapeutic value – but didn’t perceive the peril. It seemed like a hippy-dippy-yet-harmless proposal from latter-day flower children just looking for another way to get high. Something to be laughed off.

So, those who voted for it last November probably reasoned, “What could it hurt?”

Following the ordeal of Flight 2059 not even a year later – we now know.

Colorado Springs Gazette Editorial Board