Professor David Nutt

Well, no, nothing...

Nothing is completely harmless, as I like to point out.

Between about five and ten people a year in Britain die of water poisoning.

Right.

But at least a million people a year are using mushrooms.

The government's own data going back the last 20 years says there might have been one death.

Right.

I mean, you know, tiny, tiny.

If you take that as obviously the most serious, some people have panic attacks, some people get anxious during the trip.

But the thing is that they tend only to be used once, two, twice, three, four times a year.

So you don't get dependent.

And, you know, if you don't like them, you don't use them.

And that's why...

that the safety is proven by this very, very wide use.

The first

clinical study we did with with psilocybin which is the active ingredient magic mushroom juice the first scientifically study we did we started in 2012 and to get a clinical study approved you have to go to an organization called the MHRA the medicines and healthcare regulator authority and we'd like to do this study and they said well how do you know that psilocybin is safe and

because you haven't done any animal research.

You know, typically drugs, you've got to do animal research, toxicology.

And we said, well, no, we're an academic group, and we can't afford to do that.

And actually, I don't think we need to, because we know from your own government data there's a million people a year using it without harm.