Is Psilocybe cubensis legal? Netherlands, UK, Germany and US

The law names species, not strains

Legislation follows taxonomy. The Dutch list names Psilocybe cubensis among dozens of fungi; the British and German texts cover any fungus that contains psilocin or psilocybin. None of them mentions Golden Teacher, B+ or any other cultivar, and none needs to. A mushroom of any strain is a P. cubensis mushroom in law.

Netherlands

Mushrooms that naturally contain psilocin or psilocybin are on List II of the Opium Act, under a heading that names the species one by one, Psilocybe cubensis included (Opium Act). The decree that added fresh mushrooms took effect on 1 December 2008 (Staatsblad 2008, 486). According to the Trimbos Institute, dried mushrooms had already been prohibited since 2002 (Trimbos, drugsinfo.nl).

Sources differ on where dried mushrooms sit today. The explanatory note to the 2008 decree and the Trimbos Institute place fresh and dried mushrooms on List II; the Jellinek, the Amsterdam addiction care organisation, writes that dried mushrooms fall under List I (Jellinek). Either way they are illegal.

Grow kits are legal to sell. The Trimbos Institute explains that buying a kit is legal because you are not buying mushrooms, and that the mushrooms are illegal as soon as they appear above the surface. The Public Prosecution Service regards up to 5 grams of fresh or 0.5 grams of dried mushrooms as a quantity for personal use and in principle does not prosecute possession up to that amount (OM, Opium Act guideline). That is prosecution policy; it does not make possession legal.

Magic truffles, the sclerotia of some other Psilocybe species, are a separate case: they are not mushrooms in the legal sense, and the Supreme Court confirmed in April 2026 that they fall outside the Opium Act (Hoge Raad, ECLI:NL:HR:2026:450). P. cubensis cultures sold in the Netherlands produce mushrooms, not truffles, so this exception does not apply to them.

United Kingdom

Section 21 of the Drugs Act 2005 placed any fungus containing psilocin or an ester of psilocin in Class A of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, from 18 July 2005 (Drugs Act 2005, s. 21). The Home Office's explanatory memorandum states that importing, exporting, producing, supplying or possessing such mushrooms is an offence "whatever form they are in, whether prepared or fresh" (explanatory memorandum).

We found no statute or official guidance that deals with spores or colonised kits directly. A culture that produces mushrooms produces a Class A drug, and producing one is an offence.

Germany

Psilocin and psilocybin are listed in Annex I of the Narcotics Act (BtMG), the category of substances that may not be traded or prescribed (BtMG, Annex I). The annex also covers organisms and parts of organisms containing them, and biological material suitable for reproducing them, when misuse for intoxication is intended. Section 2 of the act counts fungi among such organisms (BtMG, section 2). Spores and kits sold for growing psilocybin mushrooms fall under that wording.

United States

Psilocybin and psilocyn are Schedule I hallucinogens under federal law (21 CFR 1308.11). Spores contain no psilocybin; a laboratory study of P. cubensis found no tryptamines in them (Gotvaldová et al., 2021). In a letter of January 2024, reported in the legal press, the Drug Enforcement Administration stated that spores without psilocybin or psilocin are not federally controlled, and that material becomes controlled once it contains those substances, for example after germination.

State law varies. California's Health and Safety Code makes it an offence to cultivate spores or mycelium capable of producing such mushrooms with the intent to produce psilocybin or psilocyn (section 11390). Several states and cities have changed their own rules on mushrooms in recent years; those changes do not alter federal law.

Crossing borders

The law that applies is the law of the place where you are. Taking mushrooms out of the Netherlands is illegal under Dutch law, bringing them into another country is illegal almost everywhere, and a spore print or kit that is legal to buy in Amsterdam can be illegal to import or grow at home. The Trimbos Institute notes that magic mushrooms are illegal in nearly all other countries.

This site describes the species; it does not encourage buying, importing or growing where that is against the law. Countries not listed here were not researched for this page.